The Monomaniac

Pastors are Too Important

2012-01-27T21:21:00.000-08:00

Recently the Bakersfield community has endured the very public moral failings of two of its beloved lead pastors. These public scandals within the local church community got me thinking about the demands we place upon pastors.

Do we really expect these people to be without sin? In terms of daily practice, we clearly do. Pastors can have sin in their past, indeed quite far back in their past, but it better never cross over into the present. They can get away with a few stories from the pulpit about impatience with their kids or frustration in traffic, but if it goes much beyond that, the pastor will be run out on a rail, or will at least feel that he doesn't belong in ministry. We only want to hear about run of the mill everyday softball sins from our pastors. Anything else will disqualify him from ministry and he knows it. But do we really believe that the moral struggles of the people leading local churches only goes as far as marital spats over things like putting the toilet paper on the roll incorrectly?

After hearing these two men make their very public confessions in disgrace, and having either to forfeit their careers or be forced into it, I felt a strange thankfulness for my obscurity and anonymity. But even that got me thinking: Why shouldn't everyone be under this kind of scrutiny in the church? The reason sin so often comes out into the open with pastors is that everyone is watching their every move, all the time. Perhaps we should do the same with everyone else.

Ah, but the Bible says that the teacher will incur a stricter judgment, and perhaps we are to interpret that to mean that we have a right to know about the personal lives of our pastors. But just how much are we entitled to know about our pastors? How much do we need to know? How much do we want them to tell us? Perhaps since they are the models of godliness in the church we should put web cameras in their homes so we can observe every detail. Pastors give up their right to privacy and the deeply personal aspects of Christian growth when they sign a contract to be the public face of the church, correct? Think about it: Would you want to be led by a man that blew up in anger at his children last week? Their Christian journey is now our business! We should not only know about his casual sins, but his past struggles, his family brokenness and all. Why? Because that way we can hold him accountable to the high demands of his office and provide the pressure necessary for him to live representatively. We should know about the times his eyes wander at the gym, the frequency of his sex life, his financial business, his family interactions and the like. Or, more to the point, if he knew we were privy to all of this, then he might be better constrained to live as he ought to live. Yes, his motives might be to please us, but at least the watching world wouldn't see scandal. Perhaps you feel I've stepped over a line here, but I'm hard pressed to see how this is inconsistent with our present treatment of those called to lead us. Should not the pastor himself initiate in all of this? He should feel comfortable granting this kind of access, because, after all, his life is to be above reproach, transparent, vulnerable, opened up to God and man, as an example to the believing community of how we should live.

Surely as it is the majority of pastors instinctively protect themselves and their own personal journeys with Christ. Many of them take up the cross that is theirs alone to bear. And so they suffer in isolation because that is what the system has given to them as a choice; either abandon your profession or carry on struggling with deeply personal sins, perhaps sharing them only with a few trusted friends outside the church. There is no option, clearly, for him to share deep moral struggles with the church and be retained as a pastor. It's a simple either/or choice; vocation with reputation or transparency with no vocation. He cannot have both transparency and his vocation, unless his transparency is over flea bite sins. What other job on the earth is like that? Not even the presidency anymore! And certainly not the kingship of Israel!

How did it come to be the case that an entire believing community would thoroughly, relentlessly examine a single person for ongoing consistency in the Christian life while everyone else is allowed to work out their Christian growth in relative anonymity, free from such intense accountability? Is this a biblical thing?

Pastors have become too important. They are so important that they can't bear up under the pressure, or they do and suffer in silence. We see historically how they came to be so important. I offer a brief sketch of this process here:

1. Clement and Apostolic Succession:

St. Clement appears to be the first person to speak of the notion of apostles passing on their spiritual gifting for leadership to a succeeding bishop. The motivation was pure here. His desire was to ensure, in an age before the wide distribution of apostolic literature, that Christians would be "under" apostolic leadership. The problem of course is that it sets the stage for the bishops to become pre-eminent in the Church.

2. 2nd Century drift away from the notion of "the body:"

Ignatius, the second century church leader and martyr, said plainly, "if one is outside the bishop, he is outside the church." Again the motivation was pure. Ignatius wanted to ensure that Christians were protected from false doctrine and that they were carefully led during a period of great tensions. In the 3rd century, Cyprian of Carthage wrote, "The Church is in the Bishop and the Bishop is in the Church." One can readily see the shift away from the concept of "church" as the people corporately practicing the spiritual gifts for mutual edification to a single individual, in whom all the spiritual gifts reside, offering his singular gifts to the desperate laity, like a hen feeding a gaggle of starving chicks.

3. 2nd Century, The Allegorical Method of Origen:

Origen taught that the common laymen should never see a Bible. Only the spiritually gifted and spiritually clean should handle the word of God. Why? Because only he can be relied upon to find the hidden wisdom of God in its pages. If one were to hand the Bible over, at least for authoritative teaching, to just anyone, the text would be badly misunderstood, to the demise of the whole church.

Now this is starting to sound like an equation: Spiritual gifting for leadership is passed through a proper apostolic process (Apostolic Succession) + Only the bishops in proper succession define the boundaries of the church (Hierarchy of Ignatius and Cyprian) + Only certain men should interpret the Bible (Allegorical Method of Origen) = Pastors are really important! In fact, the pastor is the church.

We are still maintaining the legacy of all this, even in the Protestant church, although you occasionally hear reluctancy among us. We still in practice seem to believe that the spiritual gifts have collapsed into one man, and we go to church to benefit from him. Perhaps it is time to abandon the notion of churches as places of personality and high theater. Perhaps the simple home church of the first century, in which all people practiced their spiritual gifts and in which all were subject to accountability is a better way. There is just something about a crowd of people all lined up looking in the same direction every week expectantly awaiting the brilliance that will flow uni-directionally from the pulpit to the people that elevates a man unnaturally.

Maybe it is high time to meaningfully rethink the centrality of the pastor within the community of God. He is just another of the imperfect people of God practicing his spiritual gifts; he is not the fount of the spiritual gifts exercising them in moral purity.

Education as Worship

2011-12-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

The secular artist does not intend to provide an occasion for an encounter with the divine, but that is what he does. I don't see in him the natural terminus of his creative genius; it goes much deeper than him. He intended for me to worship him or his art, but of course I can't stop looking behind him to the true source of all creative genius. Perhaps there will be others that will exalt him, but I cannot be counted among them.

Imagine what it would mean if his innovative contributions were sourced in him alone and not in a source greater either than him or any congress of the best and brightest. It would mean that should some of our finest artists die, there would be no hope of ever seeing the beauty and glory of their work. But of course since it is true that the sum of human creativity is ultimately nothing more than a thimble full of the ocean of God's creativity, any instance of human ingenuity impels us to celebrate it, and yet to see it as epilogue to the great creation event and prologue to the best expressions of both divine and human creativity; it is no climax! Whatever we may think of Steve Jobs or Mozart, they are only midstream; indeed greater things have been done and will be done.

In the same way, the secular educator does not intend to provide an occasion for worship, but for the Christian he does so all the same. The Christian receives his secular education as another opportunity to search out the mind of God in all things. In that sense, for the Christian, either a secular or a Christian education are sacred journeys into theological truth, but a Christian education is self-consciously theological in its work while a secular education often is inherently hostile to the theological truths that alone can make sense of doing education in the first place. Everyone in the Christian institution is asking the question, "what is this telling me about God, His truth, His world, and my place in it?" In the secular institution, only the Christians within it are asking those questions; the others are far too cosmopolitan for all that.

In that sense, the Christian school is more liberal than the secular school. The secular school would tell us to make art--say, a landscape--but tells us not to question whether the scenes in nature that inspire art could themselves be the handiwork of a supremely powerful artist. In point of fact, the secular school tells us to create, but not to think that the universe is an artifact of creativity. The Christian school tells us to create because that is what we were created for (at least partially). Which is the more liberal idea? That nature observed is nothing more than nature observed? Or that nature observed indicates an entire supernatural realm that may be explored through nature? Is it more liberal to believe that Yosemite is just an accident of geometry and physics or that Yosemite tells us about geometry, physics and much much more?

Argument for the Martyr Ideal: Biblical, Part VI

2011-11-23T21:20:00.000-08:00

And now we consider the Old Testament and the question of war. Let us establish at the outset that God's reasons for war in the Old Testament are clear. He is separating from the hardened and wicked Canaanite groups a representative people for Himself. This required a short term policy of "cleaning house" and starting fresh with the Israelites. And thus not just any war was sanctioned by God, but genocidal war was sanctioned. Curiously the Israelites are eventually chided for being too merciful with these people. They were supposed to be more efficient at eliminating the corrupting influence from the land.

In that sense, I am not opposed to war in principle. I think God has the right to command war when it serves His sovereign purposes, but now is not the time for war, in my estimation. The testimony of Scripture seems clear that God has not set aside His right to make war on the wicked, but He will surely do this in His own sovereign timing. There is a "time for war and a time for peace." If we are to beat our swords into plowshares, I wonder if we are meant to do this only after we have exhausted the full range of uses for our swords? Three passages from the OT are particularly instructive:

Gen. 15:16 – Note that Abraham was given permission to have an alliance with the Amorites, because their “wickedness was not yet full.” Several generations later, Joshua is commanded to commit Genocide against the Amorites (Josh 10). Perhaps only God can determine when the wickedness of a people is “ripe for destruction.”

Deut. 2:9,19; Deut. 23:3,4 – Note that God instructs the people of Israel not to fight a war of extermination against the Moabites. If Joshua had independently determined that they too were wicked and deserved to be destroyed, then he would have killed the ancestors of David’s grandmother, Ruth.

Clearly capital punishment is a key feature of the law of Moses, but it should be remembered that God's purposes with the people of Israel is to establish lex talliones, and to instruct them, by use of the law, of the serious ramifications of their departure from Him and His laws. Sin requires a just response, and God must surely instruct the people of this principle or they will trivialize the covenant and thus trivialize God's various merciful acts. It is in that sense an act of love to provide the law, since without it there can be no context for mercy and thus no context for the restoration of relationships. God's law is a means to an end, at least according to Paul in his tutor metaphor. (Gal. 3)

How to Make A Great Christian School

2011-11-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

The Christian Worldview Model as an answer to the liberal Christian school. How does it look? How should a Christian school function?

Step 1 - Set the standard in education

The Christian school should not look to public schools for direction; they should be providing visionary leadership to all educators in the community. We look to God and to His truth for the model of education and not to John Dewey and the like.

The relentless pursuit of God's truth in everything is the goal of the Christian school. The Christian school looks to model unity, not mere plurality. Unity involves a complex of relationships in which diverse views are held together by a robust core of central principles. Plurality is a mere diversity of views in close proximity to one another due to the artificial administrative contrivance of the institution. The truly great Christian school is a place where unity is modeled as the goal and not mere plurality.

Step 2 - Listen to market demand second

"We'll tell you our mission, and then you tell us what you think." Everything we do is theological training! Every class, even in advanced calculus, is about finding the mind of God, knowing His world, finding our place in His world and then empowering young people to make their unique contribution in His world!

It is true that parents want great programs and high SAT scores and opportunities for their kids, but that isn't what they are paying for. What they are paying for is a truly excellent Christian education, meaning an education that gives their students a theologically rich, and content specific, perspective on their SAT tests and their football games and everything else.

Step 3 - Create market demand

Good companies and good products respond to market demand; great companies and great products create market demand. How can the customer always be right if he doesn't know what he needs? The Christian school doesn't respond to demand for excellent education; it is a prophetic revelation of excellence in education. It gives them something better than they could have imagined while also fulfilling many of their lower expectations. Lewis' parable of the horses is instructive. Parents wanted us to train their horses to run faster and jump higher, but we have given them wings, with which they beat the natural horse at its own game and still do far more.

I take it that a great Christian school will train young people to excel in their sports and college entrance exams, but it will do far more than that. It will give them a compelling reason to perform for God's kingdom glory as a response to His extravagent grace! We will not give the people what they want so that we may secure funding; we will uncover for them what they always desired but could not express, and then they will be compelled to support this revelation of truly excellent Christian schooling.

Step 4 - Be a real "unity in diversity"

Students in the great Christian school are encouraged to discover their unique gifts and make their unique contributions within God's world. They are encouraged to do the hard work of understanding His world, His plan, and to accept their place in His Cosmos! We eschew the liberal plan of "finding self" and "asserting self" and then "bringing God into it" after the fact in a narcissistic effort to put God on our side. But this requires some assumptions regarding the content of Christian truth. The intellectual journey is not first about "finding my voice," but about "listening to His" in the sciences and in the Scriptures. But that entails that students are not in school first to specialize, but only to specialize after they have all become generalists both in natural and special revelation.

In short, the great Christian school advocates for a comprehensive philosophical position from which to make sense of the entire life-long search for truth in nature and in holy writ.

Teachers in such a school will passionately promote an appreciation for God's truth and revelation in all things. They will insist that students demonstrate the minimum levels of proficiency in the various arts and sciences. Surely the effect of this will be to compel students to search beyond the minimalist requirements of the high school diploma, or even the Ph.D.

Even the students most dismissive of the search for truth in favor of specialization, in a climate relentlessly promoting the search for God in all things, will surely see the inherent value of subjects to which they were not originally drawn by self-interest. And many will perhaps see the value of lifelong learning, developing a capacity for deferred gratification, which is clearly lacking in this age of specialization.

Step 5 - Be "Gracious Dissenters"

We should not abandon robust and content rich central principles, but neither should we be parochialists. There is surely a middle way here. On the one hand, a school doesn't need to admit only certain highly restrictive denominational perspectives and students in agreement with these perspectives, but it also doesn't need to affirm as a solution to this a least common denominator approach to Christian doctrine whereby we only sloganize various doctrines and never probe them or commit to them. Perhaps the best way to go about building a great Christian school is to affirm an irreducible minimum, but sufficiently nuanced, set of doctrinal teachings as true, but then to allow other perspectives to challenge these positions in a spirit of grace. For example, it is even possible to be a Calvinistic/Reformed school whose policy is to allow students to hear other positions and even to challenge the Reformed position with the best ideas on the other side. But in the end the school would maintain the truth of the Reformed position. I would call this "good liberalism." Good liberalism is merely a wide search for truth and understanding rather than the suggestion that truth and understanding cannot be reached due to the obvious plurality of perspectives.

Comparative worldview training is another example of this. We teach the necessity of Christianity, but also encourage understanding the details of the conflict that exists between Christianity and the claims of other worldviews, even challenging the cherished Christian position with the best arguments against it.

Step 6 - Proclaim certainty in what is certain and the search for certainty in what is not

Theological certainty is possible, and again I'm not referring to a reductionist approach that leaves theological dialogue nothing more than a collection of oversimple axioms that everyone can agree upon, such as, "Jesus loves us," "Salvation is by grace," "God is Triune," and the like without sufficient explanations. If such statements are the basis of a school's unity, then its unity is superficial at best. Consider the unity of many "ecumenical" organizations like the World Council of Churches, which is essentially a unity devoid of any meaningful content. What if we ask second tier questions, like, "How did Jesus secure salvation and for whom?" Now we are knee deep in conflict, and this conflict is necessary for intellectual growth. The solution to this conflict is not to pretend it isn't there, or to affirm that everyone must be right, but to champion the search for certainty, which is going to require certain commitments with respect to many, if not most, of the doctrinal claims of the Christian faith.

We ask hard questions in order to answer them. We are not trying to have a discussion, but a dialectic search for wisdom and understanding. Perhaps it is just the case that a board or a faculty has researched and thought about the various doctrinal positions available and they have simply made a choice. How is representing, say, the Protestant position, going to in any way necessarily compromise the interdenominational appeal of a great Christian school? Could they not be both committed to Protestantism and welcoming and gracious to families representing other perspectives, and the reason would be because of a deep confidence in the truthfulness of their position?

Step 7 - Promote Bible classes as the center of the academic program

For the early Christians, theology provided interpretive guidance to the whole spectrum of human investigation. Theology does not set itself against the sciences, but is rather the precondition for the intelligibility of science. A deep theological understanding will only fuel a wider search for understanding in the various arts and sciences. A theological school communicates the glory of discovering the mind of God in the myriad ways He has chosen to reveal Himself.

If theological instruction is reduced merely to "another subject," then what will provide the motivational and interpretive grid through which education will be understood, its discoveries interpreted and appropriated? Will it be the mind of man? Will it be a naturalistic worldview? Will it be a pantheistic or postmodern worldview? It is my contention that without a theological center, education collapses into a collection of human perspectives, none of which can be said to exercise any guiding influence upon the others. Even theology can be said to be little more than systematic human attempts to interpret holy writ; and who are we to say one interpretation should dominate others?

Step 8 - Ensure that all are trained in a Christian worldview

And thus a great Christian school will see to it that all of its people are trained in a deep understanding of the Christian world and life view. This means more than merely reading the Bible and then trying to decorate the curriculum in English with a few verses. It means that theology becomes the tool of integration. Theology brings all subjects together in a complex search for the knowledge of God, His world, our unique place in it and the like. As such, it is every Christian's responsibility within the Christian school to be prepared to advance such a view. It is not sufficient for the Bible teachers to do it by themselves. There should be a fundamental philosophical difference between the Christian math teacher and the godless math teacher. The Christian math teacher presses towards understanding and communicating God's intellectual property in mathematics, and makes it clear to students that this is what he is up to.

How to Make a Liberal Christian High School

2011-10-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

Here is how you would construct a liberal Christian high school, and by liberal I mean one that promotes a plurality of perspectives, including Bible, rather than interpreting the plurality of perspectives that exists in the world through a robust, and inflexible, set of essential Christian principles. In short, liberal "Christian" education is no longer theocentric; it is diversified. Theology surely is only one of many subjects to be taught. No theology of any specifically defined sort should serve as an interpenetrating or determinative epistemological framework. In the liberal Christian school, theology is integrated rather than serving as the tool of integration itself. And so practically, how would one go about building a liberal Christian school?

Step 1 - Let public schools be the model

For their obvious deficiencies, the public school system is forced into communicating to a deeply pluralistic constituency. Perhaps we have more to learn from them than they would ever need learn from us, especially about getting along with others. And so many "Christian" schools have become little more than public schools with Christian accessories in the form of Bible classes and chapel services and verses dotted about here and there in order to decorate the letterhead.

Of course this will minimize the offense of "inflexible" Christianity, which surely is a worthy goal if one is to draw in a wider demographic.

Step 2 - Listen to market demand first

"Tell us your desires and then we'll tell you our mission." Powerful people in the community want to preserve their power, and the best way to do that is to invest in the preservation of power. What rich people want in their local private school is simple: They want AP classes, first rate athletics, first rate arts programs, and all the necessary tools to ensure that their kids will remain on top. Theological training is ranked down on the list, since it is both a soft science and admits too much controversy of opinion. Perhaps there are Christians that want something else, something more, but who really believes they are that numerous?

Step 3 - Provide for market demand

If the customer wants a well oiled machine for the production and preservation of aristocracy, then we ought to provide it for them. After all, they will back it with their significant dollars if we do. They want scholarships and high SAT scores and the like. And that is what we will give them. In the liberal Christian school, SAT scores and various successes are not a means to an end; they are the ends in themselves. If a kid learns to think well theologically, then that is merely a bonus.

Step 4 - Compartmentalize

Each child has his or her own unique gifts, and the school exists to nurture those gifts. The school should not discourage a gifted athlete by making him feel that he is somehow shirking his responsibilities by specializing. God made him to be an athlete, not a composer or mathematician. Math has its scope and limits and so does Bible and so does art. The school exists to help students specialize in some functional area so that each can find a specialization in college and then specialize in a career later.

This approach maximizes customer loyalty because it makes the majority of students feel successful in their "area" and thus enter colleges through avenues of specialization. And, after all, feeling successful is the first step toward being successful.

Consider also that since few Christians will ever risk any payoff in the present for an ambiguous future payoff, then training for immediate payoff supersedes all other interests. To suggest that the Christian school exists to advance God's kingdom truths is so insufferably opaque to the average Christian that he would much rather compartmentalize Bible classes away and focus instead on how his kid is going to get into college.

Step 5 - Be "Ecumenical"

Certainly restricting the Christian demographic is going to limit revenue, so one should consider all denominations regardless of their incompatibilities. Of course the school can never mention these incompatibilities, but the school should fairly invite and represent all, including perhaps Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Adventists, Mormons, etc. The school should include teachers from all denominations, so that the school can be a place of ecumenical unity. It is true that this will result in a kind of "lowest common denominator" Christianity, essentially trivializing Bible instruction, because any discussion of details or fundamental differences will be met with instant horror. Thus theological instruction becomes thin at best, merely added to the core program as a glorified elective.

Step 6 - Vilify Certainty

Along with the liberal spirit comes a vigorous effort to vilify "narrow-mindedness" and "intolerance." This shows up in theology when PhD's ask questions like, "How can you be certain who is going to heaven?" "The Bible is the authority, but whose interpretation is the authoritative view?" "The Bible is God's word, but it is also literature, and so it's meaning may be inaccessible to all but ancient cultures." "The available systematic theories are inadequate. We are still searching for a true systematic theology." "History is a matter of interpretation," and so on...

As a result, uncertainty in education is celebrated above a deliberate search for certainty. The point here is that advocates of the liberal approach actually believe we are never going to arrive at certainty, especially on theological matters such as free will, divine sovereignty, how salvation works, the Trinity, and a whole host of other theological inquiries. Questions are more valuable than answers. Doubt is more important than conviction. The search for truth is more important than the apprehension of truth and then living accordingly. To many Christians the most immature Christian is the one who is absolutely confident that his theological positions are correct and lives boldly as a result. Surely he hasn't thought things through!

Step 7 - Strip Bible classes of academic rigor

Since Ecumenical unity must be maintained, the Bible classes will have to abandon academic rigor and academic accountability over various certainties in favor of seminars in conflict resolution, devotional literature, prayer, leadership principles, relationship building, stress reduction and the like--all things an "ecumenical" community can agree upon.

And not only that, but the customers are not really paying for Christian worldview training. They don't want any amount of work in the Bible class to compromise the search for excellence in areas where there is tangible payoff, such as AP courses, SAT prep and various extracurriculars.

Step 8 - Make "Christian Worldview Training" Passe

The final move towards liberalism is to make "Christian Worldview" as a term itself wholly passe or even so foreign as to be meaningless. One knows when the process of liberalism is complete by asking a question something like this: "If I never go on to study math or to make a professional contribution that involves math, then why should I conclude that my studies of math in high school are deeply meaningful?" If the response is blank stares and people are clearly unable to answer the question or they are puzzled by the question, then you know you are dealing with people whose worldview is decidedly liberal. If the person says, "Math is another area in which we may discover the mind of God," and lives like it, then you are dealing with a different kind of Christian.

In the end, the path to liberalizing a school seems rather clear. And I should also note that this is probably not a quick transformation. It is a gradual imperceptible migration from various principles towards liberal plurality. It is likely that many people don't see it happening until the work is nearly complete.

Don't Worry, You Don't Need to Turn the Other Cheek

2011-10-28T20:53:00.000-07:00

I need to make it clear that what follows is a sarcastic piece. I've heard many comments on it in the past that took me seriously on this. Please read through to the end and I think the literary technique will become clear:

The problem with the Sermon on the Mount is that Jesus is far too vague. He doesn't give enough examples of what he means by not pursuing "eye for eye" justice. Based on the most commonly accepted post-Constantinian explanations of the Sermon on the Mount, I've devised a list of people who need never worry about absorbing evil as Jesus seems to suggest in the Sermon:

1. Soldiers (clearly). Reason: The Sermon is not for Christian soldiers who act in the interest of the state. It only applies when the soldier comes home from duty, when he's off duty, and only in non-lethal personal confrontations.

2. Police officers (clearly). Reason: The Sermon does not prescribe any ethic for Christians acting in official police business. It only applies to unofficial personal interactions when the police officer is no longer on duty. It's true that a criminal is an individual encountering the policeman (another individual), but that is not what the Sermon means by "personal" interactions because the police officer is an arm of the state and not a person, at least when he is on duty (same thing for the soldier by the way).

3. Judges and Prosecuting Attorneys (clearly). Reason: Jesus never wanted to limit career options in the Sermon. If a coworker slaps the judge he may have to turn the other cheek, because it was a personal non-lethal offense. But the judge should not worry about forgiving any offender in court while exercising his duties as a judge.

4. Christians with resources attacked for their faith in groups. Reason: Jesus only meant to suggest a non-violent response to non-lethal aggression. Clearly many forms of persecution involve lethal aggression, so the Sermon doesn't apply. Also, it is our responsibility to protect the innocent if we have the ability to do so. Why should we have to die for our beliefs if we can kill first? Of course this means that the early Christians who had resources (as Tertullian suggested they did) were actually cowards to allow their fellow believers to be slaughtered.

5. An individual Christian attacked for his beliefs by another individual in isolation from others. Reason: Again, Jesus only means non-lethal violence. And clearly this is an opportunity to protect others since any person attacking an individual for his faith is a threat to all of that faith. If one has the ability to kill the attacker, surely Jesus understands.

6. Anyone who does harm to me financially, socially or physically, or to those I love. Reason: Jesus is obviously talking only about petty crimes in the Sermon (playground stuff), nothing that could seriously "harm" anyone. How could He seriously want us to absorb any real harm when we can do something to protect ourselves and others from it?

And there are many other examples that I could offer. Here is the point: I wonder if those who interpret the Sermon as encouraging merely personal, small-scale ethics between individuals in common interactions could afford any example of a situation when Jesus' words should be applied. What if they literally interpreted Jesus here?

Other cases in which a literal reading would rule out the need to "turn the other cheek:"

7. When you are slapped on the left cheek. Reason: Jesus said plainly, "When you are slapped on the right cheek, turn the other also." The right cheek is not the same cheek as the left cheek, because to be slapped on the right cheek was a personal offence in the first century rather than an act of violence. But even if you are slapped on the right cheek, it could be that the assailant means violence by it rather than merely personal offence, in which case clearly Jesus' teaching doesn't apply. So actually we should change this one to, "When you are slapped violently on the left or right cheek."

8. When you are slapped twice. Reason: Jesus only talks about a single slap, so two slaps should result in a violent response, clearly.

9. When someone punches you. Reason: A punch and a slap are qualitatively different. One is far more violent than the other, and Jesus wasn't talking about answering violence with non-violence; he was talking about answering personal offences creatively.

10. If someone mugs you in order to take away your tunic. Reason: Jesus clearly says that it is only when someone "sues" to take away your tunic that you are compelled to give your cloak also. So if someone merely mugs you, then if you have the resources, clearly you can respond in whatever manner appropriate to defend yourself.

11. If someone makes you carry a pack. Reason: First of all, who is going to make you carry a pack nowadays? It was Roman soldiers who forced people, by law, to carry packs one mile, a rather odious practice to the Jews. But there are no Romans any longer, and we now have Hummer's in which soldiers can carry around their packs. So clearly this section can have no meaning at all in our day.

I wish these were funny. The simple fact is that most interpretations of the Sermon are transparently deconstructionist. They flow from people quite willing to so marginalize Jesus' words as to leave them in a realm of innocuous, while pleasant and pretty, abstractions, never to have practical merit in our lives in the least.

Argument for The Martyr Ideal: Biblical, Part V

2011-10-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

Tetelestai! That's the argument. From the Greek perfect tense it means, "It is finished!" or "It stands accomplished!" What is it about the cross in the past that has such pervasive future ramifications? Plainly put, evil is vanquished. It is not as though we are waiting for God to deal with evil in the world. He has decisively acted, and He is the uncontested victor! Nothing in history will ever demonstrate anything other than the glory of the cross, at least ultimately. I wonder if you really believe that. I wonder how many Christians act as though they are already the victors; as though nothing in this world is a threat to them. If we need not fear God, we need not fear anything else! Do you believe it?

Instead of loudly insisting that Jesus is the solution to evil, we timidly shrink behind citadels and war planes, as if they have any power over evil.

We Christians act as though evil could win without the US military. We fight evil with everything but the cross of Jesus and evil proliferates. Perhaps this is the glory God would display to the world--that all our efforts to battle evil, both within and without, are doomed to failure and those few who turn to the cross find victory.

The irony in our approach is that we use every method but the cross to secure our freedoms, which only leaves them as sand clutched desperately in our hands. As we clutch tighter to our freedoms and our land and our rights, the more they dissolve away. And all the while God has already secured our freedom through Jesus' final victory over evil at the cross, but by our speech and behavior we declare to Him in no uncertain terms that the cross is not enough for us!

Logical argument:

1. Either evil is vanquished through Jesus' atonement and resurrection and eventual second coming or it requires something more (ie Jesus' work and man's work, etc).
2. There can be nothing added to Jesus' work to make it sufficient, or current, or adequate to address all evil in the world.
3. Conclusion: Jesus' work is all that is needed to vanquish evil (presumably that is what the Christian must preach... I Cor. 1:17-25).

Argument for the Martyr Ideal: Biblical, Part IV

2011-10-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

There is a needed clarification to post II, the one that addresses justice and mercy. And this is perhaps an unnecessary clarification for most, but I need to make it clear that punishment cannot be equivocated with discipline, or "chastisement."

Many parents spank their children. Is that a matter of failing to "turn the other cheek?" In the context of the Sermon, Jesus addresses evil issuing from instructed adults, those who know what is right and choose to do wrong, or at least they have been instructed many times in this regard. Such people rightly deserve punishment (at least in principle), but do they require instruction? Perhaps there are unusual cases in which instruction would be appropriate, but in most instances the person doing the kinds of evil Jesus discusses in the sermon knows full well what he is doing and he does it anyway.

This is perhaps where the modern just war theory and my position find some common ground. In no way does the hardened adult criminal require "rehabilitation" or "discipline." The reason for this is that he has already been instructed in what is right and refuses to conduct his life in that way. Of course all of us after a certain point are in this position. The difference between just war and my position is how to respond to this obvious fact.

The just war advocate claims that justice requires punishment, plain and simple. My position would suggest that such an individual needs to be trained in the gospel, and if he refuses he will be excommunicated from the Church. In the meantime God may use the world's punishments as a form of "chastisment." That wasn't the intention of the state, but God can redeem the time.

Note also that logically if I'm right here, then it it possible for punishments to have an indirect and unintended teaching purpose. Some people will observe this and see that such behavior is not only punished, but is not particularly wise if one desires to live a fruitful life. Very well then, punishment can have an unpredictable byproduct of instruction, but that is not the reason for punishing criminals in a society. It is foolish to say to the criminal, "we are imprisoning you in order to teach others that they shouldn't behave in this way." The reason the man is imprisoned is because that is what justice demands, plain and simple. It may or may not train others. The problem with saying that we imprison to teach is obvious; not everyone is going to learn what we are teaching. Some will only learn that one should be a bit more careful about one's illegal activities.

To fully appreciate this difference, let us consider the case of hell. Is it a place God establishes to instruct or rehabilitate people? Is it a place where God clarifies to those in heaven the consequences of wrong actions, so that it has an indirect teaching purpose? It seems clear that the reason for hell is wholly punitive. It exists as a just response to lives dedicated to rebellion against God. There is no disciplinary purpose to hell at all.

Related to this: No Christian parent should think of spanking his child as a "punishment." It is discipline or instruction, using temporary pain to help children develop patterns of life that will empower them to avoid self-destructive patterns of life later. All the while we teach our kids about God's justice and what it requires (a perfect life and a perfect sacrifice) while reinforcing the good news that Jesus has provided for both in the cross.

Argument for the Martyr Ideal: Biblical, Part III

2011-10-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

And now we turn to the famous passage in Romans 13:1-7, which has since Augustinian times been used to justify claims that God delegates authority in war to nations. What follows is a critique of that interpretation and a suggestion as to a better interpretation.

This section begins with "all authority is ordained by God," and famously goes on to say that the government is given the power of the sword to enforce justice, or at least this is the common understanding of the passage.

It should be noted that this section of Scripture is immediately preceded by a section that discourages violence in reaction to the government. It seems clear that the Roman Christians were facing persecution by the Romans. Perhaps some were tempted to take vengeance on the Roman state for this. Clearly they couldn't make an appeal to the state for a redress of wrongs since the state was the source of this persecution, or at least was no safe ally against it. Paul tells them not to "repay evil with evil," and to "live at peace with everyone," and to "leave room for the wrath of God." Finally he says, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink." All of this is in perfect concert with the Sermon on the Mount.

Then he begins his discussion of the role of government. It is clear that this section must be understood in light of what Paul says immediately before it in chapter 12. How might this change one's interpretation of the passage?

Simply stated, the passage becomes a statement of God's sovereign permissive plan with respect to the role of the state. God will allow for the state to prosecute evil, as it sees fit, for as long as God sees fit to allow it. The statement in the beginning that "all government is ordained by God" is crucial. The Greek verb for "ordained" is tetagmenai. It is a perfect passive tense verb, meaning "having been assigned" or "having been ordained." The idea is not that God is actively assigning and delegating his authority to corrupted governments, essentially sanctioning their rule, but rather that human beings have seized the role of governance from God and God will sovereignly determine the limits of this. He will hem them in, or "ordain" the extent of their freedoms in managing the world. It is simply not obvious given this verb that God in any way delegates his own authority to them in dealing with evil in the world. If that were true, then God would be responsible for their mis-rule, since that surely is the case with all relationships in which there is delegation.

So what is the point? Paul is saying clearly to the Roman Christians that they are not to resist Roman rule by seeking vengeance against them, or else the Romans will kill them, and God won't stop it. The evil the government restrains is evil as they would define it, which of course included the Christians. Should the Christians seek vengeance against the state, then they would be operating outside of God's will, and God would simply allow the state to destroy them as a result.

Thus it is perhaps better to see the role of the state as a permissive feature of God's sovereign plan rather than an active feature of his plan. I find this interpretation of Romans 13 at least as compelling as the notion of divine delegation of authority to governments.

Argument for the Martyr Ideal: Biblical, Part II

2011-10-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

In this brief section, we address the question of mercy and justice. Again Jesus is the model here. And the Pauline theology of justification is the exposition.

Is it appropriate for me to forgive an aggressor who is attacking my children or fellow Christian believers in the extended family of God? Perhaps only those victimized can offer forgiveness for those sins, and so it is my responsibility to pursue justice for them and then allow those victimized to decide later whether or not they will show mercy.

The only problem here is that I am not asked merely to extend my mercy at my convenience, but to proclaim God's mercy to all sinners. If God is the one chiefly offended in all offenses, and yet He says He will not pursue a retributive course against these offenders, then how on earth can any human being do so without operating wholly outside of God's revealed will?

And when we forgive, as we are clearly called to do, is it the case that we give up the right to punish? Surely if a man forgives his wife for cheating on him, he has no right to punish her in various ways for her infidelity. Surely if I forgive a man for stealing from me, I give up my right to demand both my resources back and a punitive sum as well. When God transfers the guilt and punishments of his elect to Jesus, then surely the Sovereign of the universe is satisfied that they need not be punished further! The problem of course is that I do not know who is elect and who is not. Thus my call is to offer this mercy to all in obedience to his command to make a universal appeal. And lest the Arminian think he has an out here because he does not hold to a strong election doctrine, his call to non-punishment is even more demanding. He essentially believes that everyone's guilt and punishment has already been endured by Jesus, so for him to advocate for any punitive measures is to claim that Jesus should endure punishment for sins and so should the people whose sins are remitted by Jesus, an absurd double jeopardy scenario.

Jesus asked us to forgive 70 x 7. Of course he meant that we are to forgive indefinitely. This means in my mind the absorption of evil. It means that evil is neutralized by forgiveness, even if that forgiveness is not received. What is one to do if the forgiveness is not received and the person holds you in contempt? The most Jesus councils we can do is to "shake the dust off our feet" and move on. Paul councils that Christians guilty of habitual sin can be excommunicated, but that is the extent of the Christian response to crimes against the community.

And now some logical analysis of the question of justice and mercy:

1. To kill anyone marked by God to receive mercy is to murder. (note the story of Cain, the first murderer, whom God "marked" so that others would not act to kill him)
2. In this age, we cannot know who is or is not marked by God to receive mercy.
3. God has called me to proclaim and grant His mercy, which I have received, universally to others.
4. If I kill someone, I may be killing one marked by God to receive mercy. (presumably God can elect such a one into heaven anyway, but that does nothing to alleviate the culpability of the one who killed him... ie "the son of man must be killed, but woe to him by whom he is killed")
4. Therefore, to kill anyone in this age is to murder.

And a few others...

1. Lex Talliones (retribution) is the foundational principle of justice.

2. Justice is the basis of any legal system.

3. The meaning of justice is independent of mercy.

4. Legal systems can function without the slightest discussion of mercy.

5. Most legal systems in fact function without any consideration of mercy.

6. Conclusion: Mercy is irrelevant to the functioning of the various legal systems of man.

Reductio argument for the typical Christian argument advocating just violence:

1. Criminals should be given just retribution in this life while the matter of mercy is settled by God for the life to come.

2. We must remain wholly agnostic as to who is to receive a grant of mercy (it’s up to God to punish or not punish in the life to come).

3. Since we know all men should receive justice and do not know who should receive mercy, then we can practically leave the granting of mercy to God alone.

4. We can confine our activities to the pursuit of justice alone.

5. Conclusion: Mercy is none of our business and we have no responsibility to grant it to anyone. Our only responsibility is to announce that God may or may not grant it and one should seek it from him alone.

6. Conclusion 2: But this is functionally the same as any justice system of man (mercy can be abstract in the sense that it need make no “showing” in the world apart from what God already demonstrated in Jesus).

Simplification: We must do our best justice and preach God’s mercy (where we can… for example, preaching mercy will be unrealistic in war or with imminent threats of various kinds).

Argument 2 (My Argument; A Martyr Idealist Position):

1. Christians are asked to proclaim the availability of mercy for all men.

2. Christians are asked to validate this claim by in fact granting mercy to all men (turning the other cheek, forgiving 70X 7, loving our enemies, doing good to enemies, etc).

3. Mercy is dependent on justice for its context of meaning.

4. In order to make sense of mercy, the Christian will have to preach justice.

5. But mercy exempts men from justice.

6. Contradiction of 4 and 5 is solved by the content proclaimed and modeled—namely, the cross of Jesus Christ.

7. The perfect justice and mercy of God proclaimed by Christians is the cross of Jesus.

8. Conclusion: To advocate for any justice other than the cross is to advocate for a justice that excludes or minimizes mercy.

Simplification: We must do God’s mercy and preach God’s justice (to provide a context of meaning for God’s mercy).

Problems with Libertarian Freedom

2011-10-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Libertarian freedom is the notion, as articulated by Jerry Walls in Philosophia Christi, ("Why No Christian Should Be a Compatibalist") that in any choice 1, I can reasonably do either A or B. There are no constraints or controls with respect to my choices. It should be noted that by "constraints or controls" libertarians also mean causal factors such as coercion by God or by desires beyond the control of my conscious will. It simply means that for any act, it is possible that I can do the opposite. Now this sounds like will neutrality, and surely that is what it amounts to practically. The will is wholly spontaneous. It is even questionable what "generates" choices. They may be wholly self-generating. Alvin Plantinga has suggested as much, even likening human choices to spontaneous emissions of sub-atomic particles in radioactive decay. Choices just appear to emanate from individuals and perhaps without any causal interference. For if antecedent causal conditions produce choices, then such choices are determined, at least to some extent, but then they cannot be truly libertarian. The will must operate spontaneously with respect to choices or else the option is not a "live option."

Here are a few of my problems with the notion of libertarian freedom (and note that I am something of a novice with the libertarian position, so think of this as a way of working through the issues):

1. Why can God not actualize a world in which all free creatures (in the libertarian sense) choose to be saved? (Note here that the great concern of libertarians is the perceived arbitrary nature of the number of saved souls in the compatibalist/Calvinist scheme.)

We are told that perhaps this is not an available option for God among the possible worlds, but then again perhaps it is an available option and God has merely chosen to actualize this world instead. Surely the situation can be better in this world. Surely greater appeals to the libertarian will can be made, since libertarian will means that sin is not debilitating with respect to choices of extreme moral import such as salvation. Perhaps God could have improved things in this world for those with libertarian freedom by doing some or all of the following...

a. God could be more active in solving the language problem, thus presenting greater opportunities to come to belief for language groups.
b. God could be active in a complex fashion, appealing to various cultures simultaneously.
c. More miracles could be done, appealing again to the libertarian wills of men. Atheists often tell us that if they could see greater evidence of miracles, then they would believe. Why not take them at their word if their freedom is libertarian?
d. Those who require more evidence before they will submit their free will could receive that evidence.
e. God could kill all infants in the womb He knows "will not choose Him," thus instantly bringing them into heaven. In theory, the only people born would be those that freely come to belief.

It seems a frail objection to all of these points simply to say, "Well, God knows that among the possible worlds, this world with all of its unbelief is the best option." The point is that even in this world he could have done more to "inspire" belief without directly causing it.

Is it not at least possible that there exists a world in which God provides sufficient "circumstances" to lead all men to belief (or at least many more than presently do), but He nevertheless chooses not to instantiate such a world? One has to at least grant this as a possibility, in which case it is possible that God has chosen this world over one that would ensure that all (or at least more) would come to belief. But of course that leads the libertarian strait into the dilemma for which libertarianism is supposed to be the remedy--namely, that God has elected a world that condemns people (and perhaps a vast majority of them), and for no other reason than His mysterious intentions.

2. If libertarianism is true, then heaven makes no sense.

Why is this libertarian freedom, which is so unpredictable, even volatile, such that it is wholly stable in heaven?

Perhaps the libertarian would conclude that the only reason for this is that there are no longer any "external" enticements to sin. The will itself need not be healed, and neither do the affections or motives of the heart need to be healed. Why? Because remember that the will sits above the desires in pristine neutrality. While there are no causal factors anterior to willful engagements in the wrong, there must also be no causal factors anterior to willful engagements in the right. Thus, a man with only pure desires may make corrupt choices, and a man with consistently evil desires may make pure choices. A wholly righteous internal disposition in man is therefore not required to fund ongoing stable belief in heaven. So why is heaven so stable with respect to the willful choices of the people in a libertarian heaven? Heaven must be the one place in the universe that is so resplendently appealing that there is ample circumstantial reinforcement to inspire ongoing fidelity without manipulating the choices of people in heaven.

But this leads to a disturbing problem for the libertarian. If all that was required to "lead" or "inspire" the neutral will into ongoing faithfulness was a kind of aesthetic beauty that naturally appealed to that will, then why did not God provide so sublime a place for mankind initially? Again, to suggest that such a world is not among the possible worlds available for God to instantiate is silly since he will make such a world actual eventually. Thus the only thing that kept Adam and Even from ongoing faithfulness was that God did not deliver to their libertarian freedom the circumstances he will deliver to others in heaven later. But that means he must have had some purpose for the fall of man, which starts to sound rather Calvinistic.

Or consider this from another angle: Surely my libertarian freedom will not be removed in heaven. But then I am in the same position as Adam, in one sense. How can I be sure that the conditions of heaven will be such that I will always choose the good? Perhaps what we have said concerning the winsome conditions of heaven are merely speculative and that my libertarian will trumps any appeals and enticements from without no matter how glorious they are. Is it at least possible that for every choice 2 in heaven, I am truly free to do A or B. And if my will is not determined in any way, then it is perhaps inscrutable whether or not I will rebel in heaven. What power could constrain my will to choice A in heaven for all eternity and leave it free in the libertarian sense?

3. The doctrine of Hell makes no sense if libertarianism is true.

If for every person counterfactuals A and B face no determining interference, either from his or her nature or from God or from the environment, then surely hell poses no limits on libertarian freedom either. It is, in theory, within the power of a person in hell to live a sinless life. There is nothing preventing him from doing right in choice 1, then choice 2, then choice 3, and so on ad infinitum. Why? Because nothing interferes with libertarian freedom, even in hell.

And if it is mere external conditions that keep people from believing, even in hell, then why would God not merely eliminate these conditions, thus allowing them naturally to come to belief?

Perhaps the libertarian should be a universalist, for two reasons:

If Jesus dies for the sins of all men, then surely all men's sins are removed and God need not punish anyone in Hell. After all, Jesus has already been punished for the sins of all humanity.

And if therefore the only reason for hell is "libertarian consequentialism"--that is, people supposedly continue to choose to be there--then surely changing the circumstances of these unhappy people, or merely waiting for the right free responses, is the thing a loving God would do. But given an infinite time in hell, surely a libertarian free will is going to eventually make a right choice with respect to salvation at least.

And a last point that addresses both heaven and hell for a libertarian: How can God judge or reward someone for choices that are not even determined by the man's heart (motives)? If choices appear without any prior determining conditions, then they are wholly vacuous uncaused phenomena. People don't make choices; choices happen to people. The curious thing here is that libertarians assume that free choice is necessary to establish moral accountability. It looks to me as though the opposite is true. And if that is true, why would God need to punish such sins in hell or reward willful belief in heaven? All unhappy souls in hell need only plead that "their will made them do it."

Argument for the Martyr Ideal: Biblical, Part I

2011-10-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

In short, the Bible affirms the Martyr Ideal (I will use this phrase from here forward in my discussions of "Christian Pacifism").

The Sermon on the Mount appears to affirm the Martyr Ideal. When Jesus says plainly to "love enemies" and "do good to those who persecute you." When he instructs us to "turn the other cheek" and "not to resist the evil person," it is simply unacceptable to explain these away with interpretive sleight of hand, such as the three most common interpretations:

1. He only meant "personal" evil and not "structural" or "societal" evil.
2. He only meant "religious persecution" and not "general persecution."
3. He only meant "non-lethal" threats.

See this article for an exposition against these interpretations: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-does-jesus-mean-by-loving-our.html

None of this makes sense when one considers the balance of the New Testament. The best hermeneutic for Jesus is Jesus. The cleanest exposition of his ethical instruction is His life. And it is no good saying that his mission was unique as the son of God and therefore we can abide by a different ethic. The sermon, and indeed the whole of Jesus' teaching, make it clear that Jesus expected his people to live exactly as he lived, and even made a pledge of His Spirit in order to make it possible. Certainly this approach to evil was cherished by the early church, which followed him literally to the cross, and did so for generations.

Other interpretations of The Sermon sound hollow and unconvincing to me.

Logical Argument:

1. The best interpretation of Jesus' words in the Sermon is His treatment of evil people. (that is to say, Jesus is His own hermeneutic)
2. Jesus' love for evil people involved confronting their evil personally and dialectically, inciting that evil against Himself, absorbing the evil, being destroyed by it, but emerging triumphant in resurrection.
3. Jesus insists that we take up this pattern with evil men.
4. Conclusion: In encountering evil and evil men we must also confront their evil, incite it against us, absorb their evil, be destroyed by it, but we will also emerge triumphant in resurrection.

That is to say, by our imitation of Christ, we proclaim his final conquest of evil at the cross! Tetelestai.

Argument for the Martyr Ideal: Introductory Remarks

2011-10-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

I begin now to defend my position on Christian pacifism; what I prefer to call the "martyr ideal." I will work to keep these various strands of the argument as coherent, and as brief, as possible. I have spent many years developing and expanding these ideas, which now seem to me to be simply the truth of the matter with respect to our ethical responsibilities as Christians.

At the very outset, let me unseat the most common challenge to my position, which comes not as any detailed argument, but rather as a mere emotional reaction to any such position. It usually goes something like this: "If someone broke into your house and threatened your children, then you wouldn't be a pacifist." The tacit argument seems to be that such an ethical position would be too costly practically, and so it must be wrong. It is untrue because it requires too much, or something to that effect.

But of course this is an absurd idea; that something is wrong merely because it is ethically costly. Almost all Christians are in agreement that maintaining belief in Christ itself can be ethically costly, especially if the government is against Christianity. Are we to conclude that because it is costly it must be wrong to go against the state and maintain belief? Surely the person using the example of the home intruder has only argued as much, which must instantly be seen as a dreadfully inadequate objection. The real question is this: Is there any reason to believe that Jesus extended the cost of discipleship as far as Christian pacifism?

A short reductio argument:

1. Any behavior mandated by one's ethic that could cost one the life of his or her children is unacceptable--that is, it is too costly to be acceptable.

2. Merely believing in Christ in some countries could cost one the life of his or her children.

3. Conclusion: Merely believing in Christ in some countries is ethically unacceptable because it is far too costly.

One can see immediately that the real question is not "is the martyr ideal costly?" Clearly it is. The real question is whether or not this costly ethical position is in the same position as the costly ethical position of believing in God in anti-Christian contexts.

Tribute to Mr. Cole

2011-09-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

Good leaders are people that possess vision, determination, energy, enthusiasm and commitment to team. Good leaders make you feel that the organization is yours and not theirs. Good leaders help you see that you are a part of something larger than yourself while affirming your irreplaceable individual contributions.

And the best Christian leaders call attention to the glory of God. In fact, often the affect of great leadership is that the leader is not seen; instead, something far more glorious is opened to the vision of all in the organization, a total that is greater than the sum of the parts, a synergy catalyzed by a competent conductor.

I've learned much from Dan Cole about leadership, and about life.

1. I've learned that character is its own charisma.

Dan is a man of consistent Christ like character. He is the first to confess his imperfections, but I certainly didn't encounter many, if any, of these. As Lewis says, the best men are the ones that speak most often of their shortcomings and the worst men think they are fine just the way they are. Dan's genuine interest in my life and work translated into a deep desire to perform well for the sake of the school, and for the sake of a good leader who asked for and modeled excellence. Dan listens before he speaks, and he seeks to know his people well before directing them. This makes him far more engaging and interesting than a merely outgoing leader. One wants to be led by a man who is deep rather than wide.

2. I've learned that love is the most powerful motivator.

Leaders can choose to motivate with fear or intimidation, but Dan Cole motivated me by loving well. When our twin daughters were born 13 weeks prematurely, he was a consistent visitor at the hospital. He would send notes of encouragement on various occasions. He always showed interest in my life and the lives of my wife and children. My daughter Trinity, who knew Dan from a young age, always sought him out in the office because he was generous and gracious with kids of all ages. When the Allen family lost their boy under his watch, I saw his heartache for that family, and I saw his commitment to join them in grief and to support them in whatever way he could.

3. I've learned that one must be courageous about one's beliefs.

One time I suggested something that Dan didn't particularly like, and he was bold in confronting my views, without in any way devaluing me as a person. He simply disagreed, and did so passionately. And he explained himself graciously. I walked away from that meeting with the feeling that as a leader one must fight for what one believes in even among one's friends. It strikes me that not many people know how to do this, especially the leaders of our nation, who seem determined to say whatever will garner them the approval of the largest voting pool. In his time at BCHS, I know that Dan wanted nothing more than to please God rather than people. If that is his only legacy, it is a worthy one indeed!

4. I've learned that the cultivation of relationships in education is as important as the cultivation of the mind.

Dan showed me a unique ability to converse easily with any group of people. Dan is engaging and winsome with people from all walks of life and all age groups. I'm sure there were days that he would go from a board meeting to a football game and converse freely with powerful and influencial adults in the community followed almost immediately by entering the world of freshmen in high school. And both groups would sense the same thing from Dan; he took a genuine interest in what they had to say, and valued each one.

5. I've learned to never be content with what I know now.

Each year, Dan gave us an opening speech to encourage us in our work at the school. It always amazed me how much Dan knows. He is a bright man, but what is more admirable than his native gifts is his desire to continue to learn. The best educators are passionate students. And Dan is a clear example of this. He was always reading something, always seeking the truth of God in all things, relentlessly attempting to do the work of Christian schooling better than he did the year, even the day, before. He taught me that even at his lofty position, it is insufficient to believe that you have arrived.

6. I've learned the merits of hard work.

Surely no one in the last six years at BCHS worked as hard as Dan Cole. It is striking to me that on the rare occasions when I would go to a basketball game or a baseball game, there he would be. I know his work was not 9-5. Often his car was the first to arrive and the last to leave. And he took his work home with him. But he did so because of his tireless commitment to make good on his promise to God to lead the school well. And he did his work with energy, integrity and contageous joy. May I be the kind of employee Dan was for BCHS.

I'm grateful to God that by his providence and grace he saw fit to introduce me to Dan Cole. My life is deeply changed and deeply enriched by knowing him. I wrote this piece simply to honor his contribution both to my life and to Bakersfield Christian High School. May God richly bless and reward Dan for his good work among us, and may God be pleased by these simple words, a pitiful recompense for all Dan has given to all of us associated with Bakersfield Christian High School.

A Few Thoughts About Roger Smith

2011-09-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

Mr. Martin, our erudite senior Bible teacher at Bakersfield Christian High School, has invented a wonderful case study in ethics. It goes like this:

Roger Smith, a quite competent swimmer, is out for a leisurely autumn stroll. During the course of his walk he passes by a deserted pier from which a teenage boy, who apparently cannot swim, has fallen into the water. The boy is screaming for help. Smith recognizes that there is absolutely no danger to himself if he jumps in to save the boy; he could easily succeed if he tried. Nevertheless, he chooses to ignore the boy's cries. The water is cold and he is afraid of catching a cold -- he doesn't want to get his good clothes wet either. "Why should I inconvenience myself for this kid," Smith says to himself, and passes on. Does Smith have a moral obligation to save the boy? Why or why not?

I'm interested in asking the same question of God: Why does God not have a moral responsibility to do something about the plight of the young boy? Instinctively it seems that if we know about an evil and have power to stop the evil, then we have a moral responsibility to stop that evil. But surely God meets these criteria.

God surely knows what a sorry individual Roger Smith happens to be, and still elects to do nothing. Are God's moral duties the same as ours?

This question seems to have two aspects to it. One is the question of God's moral duties. The other is the question of how his moral duties differ from ours. In order to address whether or not God should do something here, we must ask a few other questions: Is God morally obligated to stop evil by direct action? Is he morally obligated to stop every evil by direct action? Is he morally obligated to act justly in response to every evil? All of these relate to the larger problem of evil. I think it rather evident biblically that God is not the source of evil, or its cause. In the case under review, he did not put the child into the river. But God has also stopped some evils and not others in history. That means that he must have some purpose in allowing various evils to occur. Philosophers generally speak here of God's "morally sufficient reasons" for permitting certain evil events. One thing we know for sure is that God will be a perfect judge in the midst of all evil acts. Roger Smith, even if no one else sees what he did, will face a day of reckoning before God, his just judge.

Another angle here is to remember that for God to end all evil would be for him to end the possibility of mercy for all evil men. The parable of the wheat (his redeemed family) and the weeds (unbelievers) is instructive here. God allows the wicked and the guilty to intermingle in the world presently so that the weeds can see God's great glory as a righteous judge and a righteous savior in Christ, and as such God will not act to stop evil until enough evil men and women are brought into the redeemed family. So it is simply a mistake to say that God is doing nothing about evil in the world. He is acting redemptively in time and space in the person of his Son and in the Spirit animated community called the Church.

So it must be the case that since we come to our ethical obligations without comprehensive knowledge of God's sovereign purposes with respect to evil, and thus cannot perceive who must receive exposure to the glories of the gospel, that our moral duties exist in direct proportion to our limited knowledge of God's sovereign purposes. We must defer to God's revelation in Christ then. What does Christ do about evil? What does He command us to do? And what does He empower us to do? That is the sum of our moral duty while God extends the boundaries of His kingdom in this wicked world. He has initiated this great work in Christ; and now I exist to extend the reach of that work in the world. And it must always be remembered that God owes no man mercy. No man is entitled to God's mercy; it flows from his merciful character at his pleasure alone!

So, even though God may not directly intervene to save the drowning boy, it is still consistent with the ethic modeled by Christ for me to do so, because surely saving the boy is the best way for me to proclaim God's redemptive purposes, to "love my neighbor as myself," and thus to proclaim Christ's saving work to the boy. If Roger is not a Christian, then his actions are still measured against the standard of Christ. If any Christian were to be in Roger's position, surely it is clear that the active Spirit of God would prompt him or her to act in keeping with the gospel. Even if it was Roger himself who was drowning, and he was a murderer, it would still be a Christian duty to save him. Why? Because, in short, that is what Jesus did for me! Jesus allowed an evil person sufficient exposure to the gospel to be saved. It is true that he may not receive it and may even turn to kill me, but that says nothing about my moral duty in the moment.

Imagine for a moment that you are a first century Christian, and it is the Apostle Paul himself drowning in that water (before his conversion). Paul is a murderer, and has been hunting down your people. Do you have a moral responsibility to save him?

If I save a murderer, or fail to stop a murderer, is it an offense to the victims? Yes, they are offended to the extent that they are not cooperating with the Gospel. And to whom am I bound by allegiance to favor: the victims and their temporal claim to justice or Jesus and His Kingdom purposes?

It is curious that in these kinds of scenarios, Christians so rarely think in terms of the gospel. We are called in everything to be people of the good news. And what is that good news? God has provided forgiveness for sins through the cross of Jesus Christ! Yes, even if it is Roger Smith the murderer who is drowning, it is my duty to save his life, then boldly confront his sin, and then offer the gospel. How can I do anything else?

And here is the point: The reason I am to do this is because that is precisely what God in Christ has done for me!

And by the way, this line of argument extends to the matter of killing in defense of others or self. It does not extend God's redemptive purposes in the midst of an evil world to merely control evil by force. One says that I have a moral responsibility to defend the innocent by killing, and then present the gospel to them. The only problem here has already been discussed--namely, this is not God's program for addressing evil in Christ. His program is to confront evil dialectically, incite it against himself, absorb the evil, be destroyed by it, and then emerge triumphant in resurrection. That is the glory that God would proclaim to the world! One has a moral responsibility to resist evil, but in the manner of Christ! In Christ, God's activity in the world with respect to evil is redemptive, not merely just or preemptive. Presumably God could control evil with a word, but he is pressing for the transformation of evil people. By confronting the evil in the way of Christ, I call for the redemption of evil hearts and not merely the temporal protection of victims. I demonstrate the glory of Christ in overcoming evil and not merely the glory of man's capacity to beat back evil in order to carve out a few more days in this fallen world. Perhaps we could say it this way: Christ has clearly delegated to me the ministry of reconciliation and not the ministry of just retribution. To proclaim reconciliation one must necessarily include the redemptive context of God's justice satisfied at the cross; to proclaim justice alone is to neglect the rich context of redemption.

And note also that if I take this approach with evil, it is simply not the case that I am doing nothing about evil, and it is also not the case that I am responsible for the evil by permitting it. God is clearly permitting evil, but for specific redemptive purposes. The real question is simply this: In the absence of God's direct action, what has he made it clear to me that I should do about evil in the world? (for analysis of the problem of evil see: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2011/01/lecture-series-lecture-12-problem-of.html)

Can the Atheist Find Meaning in a Meaningless Universe

2011-08-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

For the purpose of argument, I will start with the statements of Bertrand Russell, British atheist of the last century. Russell concluded flatly that the universe is a totally random artifact of nature destined for material particularization (heat death). The universe will become nothing more than a junkyard of dead matter. One has to agree with Russell that, in the absence of God, this is a very likely scenario for the future of our universe.

But surely it doesn't escape us that if this is true, then there is no reason we are here and there is nothing that will remain of us (at least, as we know ourselves). I can see no other conclusion than that the universe is utterly meaningless! We are a random flickering of atoms and nothing else. Why are the atoms flickering thus? No reason! We are debris of the big bang. We are universal litter. We exist to express nothing and to become nothing! We are a momentary, undirected spasm of energy and then we evaporate. All our illusions of self and love and creation and art are futile acts of desperation, shouting to the universe "I exist," while it shrugs, "But that has not created in me a sense of obligation." (this line comes from Stephen Crane's famous poem).

But some atheists might protest that we are here, thrown into this absurd existence, and so we might as well make meaning of it. Sure we are products of mindless chance, but we still have minds produced by this chance. We might as well use them to construct something for ourselves. In fact, they might protest, just because Russell may be right says nothing about what we can achieve now. They might accuse me of a division fallacy here--namely, just because the universe as a whole is without meaning or direction doesn't mean that every part within it is without meaning.

The problem with this protest, however, is that sometimes what is true of the whole is true of the parts. Sometimes a canvas appears red because every part of it is red. Suppose a man decided to throw away an old garbage can, but decided first to fill it with garbage from his home. The whole thing is garbage and the individual parts are garbage. There are numerous examples we could give of this. Now we must ask ourselves the simple question; is the assumption--that if the universe is meaningless, every part of it is meaningless--a division fallacy or a truth? If we are to suggest that everything in the universe is a product of randomness, how can that add up to anything other than total randomness? If I multiply any number, or combination of numbers, by 0, can I get anything other than 0? As it turns out, the reason the universe is meaningless is because everything in it is meaningless. One cannot arbitrarily assign meaning to something that he has already defined to have no design plan, no purpose and no future.

And so the division fallacy accusation does not hold.

"What Happens in Vegas ... Lingers!"

2011-07-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

This will be critical, but it must be said. I hate Las Vegas! Perhaps I'm judgmental. Perhaps I'm a hater! We just returned from a weekend getaway to Vegas where we celebrated my brother's 50th birthday. What follows is a critique of Las Vegas itself, and not the birthday party for my brother, which was a marvelous celebration.

I was struck first by the constant movement of people. There was no stillness, no contemplative silence. Only frenzy everywhere.

I wondered whether these were sad people, spending their meager income for a few moments of escape from the doldrums of their miserable lives. There are so many people titillated by the fantasy of it all. Anyone can be a star in Vegas! Anyone can become rich! Anyone can have sex with a beautiful woman! At least as long as the money lasts.

But of course the devastating truth is that after the erotic dream, all of these people will slink back to their anonymous lives, deeply disappointed that the money runs out, and when it does the girls aren't interested and the casino is decidedly less hospitable. No one can live this way; one can only escape life in this way. Vegas exists to blot out the memory of one's boring everyday life. After all, is anyone really content working, paying bills, raising children, gazing at a sunset and the like?

And what ever happened to the economic crisis we are told about? How can it be that 50% of Americans are upside down on their home loans, willing to make short sales and willing to foreclose on homes (because they are drowning in debt), and yet this city teems with people flashing credit cards for this and that manifest necessity.

Vegas constitutes one of the most exquisite examples I have ever seen of wealth transfer from the weak to the strong. This is "trickle-up" economics at its finest. Teachers, accountants, engineers and the like spend their hard earned money so they can, for a weekend, feel like something more than a teacher, an accountant or an engineer. And those who sell this fantasy prey (intentional spelling) human nature continues to be as pathetic as it presently is, for as long as men think that a trip to Vegas will help them manage their meager lives the coffers will continue to ring loudly. Surely those who own the majestic casino's of Vegas laugh at the pathetic souls that love this place; people all too willing to search out the next thrill in "Sin City." We seek thrills and they seek our cash. Such a perfect symbiosis.

Perhaps there is no better example of the sad ambition of the masses than the number of women dressed as prostitutes in Vegas. Housewives, mothers and grandmothers attempt (and that is the key word) to reproduce the images of feminine perfection they see everywhere on posters and billboards. And why? Because they too want to be noticed as those women are noticed. They want to feel sexy; to have the feminine power of exciting lust in men, for surely that is the glory of womanhood. And so the streets abound with overweight women, strutting about in outfits a few sizes too small, drinking alcohol until they are uninhibited in their desperate classlessness. Is anyone attracted? Only those equally desperate, and equally inebriated.

Everywhere one looks in Vegas, one finds three realities: sex and alcohol and gambling. Dress all the working women in Vegas in burkas and take away the alcohol and the city would become a hot ghost town. I'm not convinced that anyone comes to this city expressly for the shows, the lights or even the gambling. They come to overconsume and overindulge. And here it is done on a scale that defies the imagination. Where else but in America can an entire city rise up in a desert expressly for the purpose of promoting an endless orgy of human excess? Nothing is made in Vegas and everything is always changing. Whether it be a building, a party, a relationship, or any other thrill; you can be sure that tomorrow it will be replaced by another. Nothing will remain.

The idea that "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" is another of the carefully crafted lies that captivates the masses of people drinking too much, spending too much, crowding into nightclubs, erotic shows, patronizing prostitutes, etc.

I wonder if the people who open their credit card statements a month after the trip to Vegas still think that what happens in Vegas stays there? I wonder if men addicted to pornography or alcohol still think that way? I wonder if men and women, enamored by Las Vegas, even know that their ongoing lack of contentment in life has something to do with the fantasies they overconsume because they feel entitled to them? What happens in Vegas bleeds out into everything else. And we all know it!

Grad Speech

2011-05-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

Recently I was given the honor of sharing the keynote speech at our graduation ceremony. Here is the transcript:

What I’d like to do today is to offer a simple message of encouragement and challenge to our graduates. As I was thinking about the many things that can be said at an event like this, and the many things that have been said and forgotten, I decided to describe what I hope every eagle will be that we graduate from this place. What do we want the characteristics of a BCHS Eagle to be?

We want our Eagles to have keen vision.

Your parents and your teachers here have tried to give you insight into the philosophical issues of our day and training that will prepare you for the intellectual challenges you will face. We have also tried to help you see your culture for what it is, in contrast to the culture of Christ. Many of you, perhaps even most of you, have accepted this training and have prepared well. I commend you.

Some of you have worked the system. Sorry to be so blunt here, but some of you have only jumped through the minimalist hoops we have designed for you to jump through and you are not in the least prepared to face thoughtful representatives of other worldviews and stand your ground.

One of three things could happen to you, and to any who are not prepared to face cultural and intellectual challenges to the Christian faith.

One, you could be overwhelmed and assimilated. You will perhaps sit in a lecture hall and hear compelling words artfully denouncing your beliefs, and you will not know what to say or even what to think. Perhaps you will conclude, “if I can’t beat them, why not join them.” And you will drift away.

Perhaps you will sit in your dorm hall and see glamorous, outrageous and fun people boldly and colorfully flouting God’s moral standards, and apparently getting away with it. And without an ability to articulate the emptiness of it all, you will end up living exactly as they do.

A second result may follow from a lack of preparation. Perhaps instead of joining them, you will separate wholly from them. You will descend from the evil of the culture and the dangers of intellectual challenges into the safe confines of the Christian subculture. Here you will surround yourselves with Christians, buy Christian music, Christian books, and Christian products of all kinds. Perhaps here you will remain a Christian, but you will be an impotent one, unable to meet thinking people on their ground and bring the truth of the Christian worldview into the marketplace of ideas.

But there is a final possibility. Perhaps if you haven’t prepared, on facing these challenges firsthand, you will wake up from your intellectual slumber and begin your training. This would be my prayer for any Eagles leaving this place today unprepared.

We also want our Eagles to mature rapidly.

The challenges of nature are urgent and that is why actual Eagles must mature so rapidly, but perhaps it is no different for our Eagles.

The writer of Hebrews similarly charges Christians to mature more rapidly than they were. He says to them, “by now you should be teachers, but you need someone again to teach you the elementary principles of God’s word.”

What is a mature Christian? According to Scripture, it is one who has learned in order to be a teacher. It is one thing to learn in order to navigate a test or dupe a teacher into thinking you read a book. It is quite another thing to learn so well that you become a resource for the next generation. And so I ask each of you solemnly: Have you learned well enough to be a teacher? Can you articulate the faith once for all handed down to the saints? Can you model it well? The time is coming when you will encounter people who will need more than Mr. Martin’s notes… as good as they are. They will need you to be a living witness to the reality of God in the world, both in word and in deed. I know by God’s grace you will be that for people.

We like our Eagles to be Aggressive.

You may remember the words of Dr. Bahnsen: “We set for the absolute necessity of Christianity in order to make sense of human reason, moral law, human dignity, love and every other intelligible human experience.”

That’s an aggressive statement. We see nothing here of the possibility or the probability of Christianity. We see no hedging or hemming and hawing. We see a gauntlet thrown down in the midst of all available worldviews. “Let Jesus be true and all else shown to be liars.”

But as you have learned here, this aggressiveness requires confidence in one’s understanding of one’s own faith and the deficiencies within other worldviews, and also grace in communicating both.

I challenge you to go forward from this place confidently proclaiming that education, morality, human reason, science, unity and diversity, and therefore love—are all our intellectual property as Christians.

It is time to play offense, to assert the superiority of Christ in the world loudly, and to insist that burden of proof is a shared burden when it comes to worldviews. We must insist that the atheist or pantheist, Muslim or postmodernist, demonstrate to us how their worldview makes sense of human reason, love, individual dignity, moral law, science and the like.

In the end, we need to be able to address the gaping philosophical emptiness of other worldviews, and demonstrate that Christianity is the only philosophical position that can suffuse the human experience with beauty and meaning.

We want our Eagles to Soar.

You are probably familiar with the parable of the eagle and the chickens… It goes something like this:

An eagle egg falls from its nest into a chicken coop, where it hatches. The eaglet is then raised by chickens and learns to behave like a chicken, scratching and pecking at the ground. And as I recall there are two interesting endings to the story; one in which the chicken sees an eagle in flight and after a certain length of time mounts to the skies to live among the clouds as nature designed him to live. The other, and less happy ending, has the eagle content to live the remainder of his days on the ground among the chickens though he was made for so much more.

My prayer is that you will soar higher than your culture.

That you will, in the words of Dr. Horner, “out-think and out-live your culture.”

My prayer is that you will lead in the arts, in science, and that our culture will be deeply affected by your various contributions in it.

In closing, let me say this: We love you! You are ours. You are our “living epistles, written on human hearts.” We have a vested interest in you. If you need us, you know where to find us.

Osama Bin Laden's Death A Few Questions

2011-05-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

How is a Christian to respond to the death of Osama bin Laden? No Christian would maintain that the man did not deserve to die. The law of God clearly states that murderers deserve the death penalty. That is the retributive structure of the law of God. I'm not sure even the Amish would disagree here.

But it is strange to see Christians on Facebook and elsewhere glorying in the man's death and eternal fate. People are happy that he is dead and that he is in hell, and they don't mind who knows about it. Many even wished he had died slower. Perhaps it would have been better for us to capture him, torture him, heal him, then torture him again, and so on until his natural death. If his death provides justice, then perhaps such a procedure would be a more perfect justice.

Others are more reserved, claiming that justice has now been done, and that this is their reason for exultation.

I wonder how consistent we can be with this idea of glorying in justice? Would I clamor for justice if no mercy was to be afforded to me? What if God in his blazing holiness materialized in the world and offered mercy to no one? Surely God is perfectly justified in releasing the whirlwind of his justice into the world, vaporizing everything unholy, including me. But he has not done so, and the reason must be to expose the wicked to his mercy. Is He wise in this? Does he not know that we have been searching for this wicked man for 10 years, and He could have ended the suffering of countless people long ago? How merciful is He to the victims of men like bin Laden if He will not act to kill such monsters?

Yet He persists in affording mercies, allowing his sun (and Son) to shine upon all of us, including the most wicked among us. Would I every hope that men like bin Laden should be saved? Do I dare? If it could have happened (and that is a biggish if), would I be content to allow Jesus to bear all his guilt and all his punishment?

Imagine a man relentlessly pursuing a murderous plot to annihilate your family. He succeeds in killing many members of your family, driving you into hiding. He has many friends helping him execute his grim work. And then one day you hear that he has turned his life over to God, and has pleaded for the mercy demonstrated in the cross of Jesus Christ. He has become a Christian. He is not facing imprisonment or the death penalty for his crimes against your family. Do you seek justice? Are you outraged by this? Or can you accept that Jesus has taken all of his guilt and all the penalties associated with it? What if his name was Paul?

And now another question: Do you really know who is elect and who isn't, and when it would be acceptable to stop making the offer of God's mercy in Christ? It has been said that only victims can offer mercy and that it is foolish to think we can extend mercy to men like bin Laden or habitual evildoers. But of course that is the case only if we are meant to extend "our" mercy at "our" convenience. What if we are commissioned to proclaim His mercy, and to do so seventy times seven, and to do it for people who may only receive God's mercy the 490th time?

And here is another question: How are men like bin Laden to be stopped? Has killing him stopped the malignant worldview of radical Islam? Can America's military budget defeat an idea?

Is the Christian mission aligned with the national mission of the expediency of physical safety? Or are we here to "tear down strongholds, and every argument that exalts itself against the knowledge of God," since, "our battle is not against flesh and blood?" To kill bin Laden and believe safety and peace is won is like cutting weeds at ground level and believing the weeds are gone. The field carries the problem under the surface, at root level. It is here the Christian busies himself in prayer, fasting, study, and missionary effort, because to do so is to proclaim not my pitiful justice or my pitiful mercy, but His!

Tribute to A Life Well Lived

2011-04-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

My grandfather recently passed at the age of 94. He is a larger-than-life patriarchal figure in our family. Here is a eulogy I wrote in honor of his praiseworthy life:

I’m honored to share a few words in memory and loving praise of my grandfather. Perhaps the best way to summarize his life is the phrase, “a life well lived.” We all want to live such a life, and my grandfather did.

What makes for a life well lived? Jesus answered this question when he said, “He who would be greatest must be the servant of all.” My grandfather was a servant of all. Without glory or attention he served as the janitor for his church, raised three daughters, and loved one woman for 73 years. He worked with his hands and by the sweat of his brow contributed much to society and required little from it. He taught several grandchildren how to fish, how to work, and how to be men. He was a simple man, a man of honesty, integrity and hard work; an elegant example of the generation Brokaw aptly called “The Greatest Generation.” It is because of my grandfather that I have determined never to praise unworthy men, for I know how a man ought to be.

We will all remember his stories; the stories are what made him. From the purely comic ones, like the story of the psychotic stray cat pulling on the screen door, or the dismembered frogs his mother demanded he put out of their misery, to the stories of his Texas relatives, stories of growing up in the Great Depression, boning more hams than any human should be able to in a day, and of course, meeting Grandma, marrying young by today’s standards, and raising three daughters in a 900 square foot home in suburban Kansas City.

He loved to remind me of the summer I spent with them as a young boy. I now identify that summer as perhaps the greatest single memory and formative experience of my childhood. He would tell me the story of my first fishing trip, when we rose at 5am to see the sunrise over the Missouri hills. Apparently I made some comment about the unusual size of the sun, and then proceeded to tell my mom about it over the phone. I was in awe at just how majestic the sun could look so early in the morning. In so many words, grandpa suggested that this must be the first time I had dragged my sorry carcass out of bed early enough to see a sunrise. He was right. He introduced me to the beauty, glory and simplicity of nature, and taught me that the highest praise we can offer the best scenes of life is our receptive silence.

For all his strength my grandpa was a proud and fragile man. Every one of my years on this earth he served me, giving me encouragement, discipline, unjustified praise and even money when I was a struggling college student. This selfless love for me proved stronger than his fear of flying. I will never forget that perhaps the purest act of love ever expressed towards me by another human being was when my grandpa, at the age of 78, boarded an airplane for the first time to honor me with his presence on my wedding day. Please understand, it is not simply that this act is a beautiful sentiment to share with you all. I am different because I have been loved like that. Everyone needs to believe that someone thinks them worthy of extravagant love; that someone in this world finds them to be extraordinary and convinces them of it by consistent action. My grandpa did this for me.

He also knew suffering in a way I have never experienced, but weathered his life’s relentless pains with dignity. He outlived most of his friends and all of his siblings. When I saw his grief at his youngest daughter Wanda’s funeral, I wanted so badly to take his pain away as he had done so many times for others. Now there will be “no more pain, no more sorrow, no more suffering, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21)” His days of suffering in this broken world are over.

My grandfather was no theologian, but he was living theology. He possessed no formal education, but he was wise. He was no orator, but when he spoke, we all listened. He was never a mover and shaker in his church, but gave that community his heart and soul for 67 years. He was never a rich man, but he was rich in everything that counts—in love and virtue. He never learned the Internet, but his connection with us is substantial and lasting.

And one last brief thought that I think he would want me to mention: My grandpa grew to love and serve Jesus Christ at Evangel Temple. He committed his life to the savior because he knew he was not enough to overcome his own imperfections. He knew he was not simply okay the way he was. He trusted that God’s love could accept him as he was and lead him into an extraordinary life, and I trust that you will honor my grandpa’s legacy by reconsidering the teaching of Jesus today. He promises to give not just enduring life, but “the good life;” “a life well lived.”

"Be Vulnerable" "Open Up" "Be Transparent"

2011-03-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

I know my wife needs this and deserves this, but do you really need me to be vulnerable, to open up and be transparent?

Why do I hear these sentiments everywhere, especially in the Church? I hear pleas to be vulnerable, to open up and to be transparent more than I hear pleas to consider some theological perspective.

I'm wondering if all of this talk flows from our cultural narcissism. The mantra of the day is, "I am okay the way I am." I am loved the way I am. I am screwed up. And I need to talk to someone about how screwed up I am so that I will feel better about being screwed up. The wonder of it is that you will listen to me because you can relate to screwed up people.

Don't give us perfect lives. Don't talk to us about your six-day-a-week workouts. Don't eat baked chicken and broccoli in front of us. Don't read impressive novels in front of us. Don't be impressive in general, unless you do it from a distance! We want our friends to be below us, or at least to struggle as much as we do. And that is why we can't stand being around either tools or saints, but perhaps it is the saint that most disturbs us. How can anyone face the issues of life we do and be ahead of us in nearly every way?

We want to join each other in mediocrity rather than spurring one another on to perfection. I would much rather have you tell me that I'm acceptable the way I am than show me a life that is in every way superior to my own.

Tell us how you cheated on your spouse, how you can't keep your diet, how you erupted in anger at your children or can't keep your head about finances. Not only can we relate to that, but if the truth be told, we want to relate to that. We want others to be pathetic because deep down we hope to stay pathetic.

It is one thing to address our faults with trusted friends; it is quite another thing to only be friends with those who share and encourage our faults.

Perhaps in bygone ages, people were preoccupied with discussion as a means to self-improvement. Today we have abandoned self-improvement for discussion itself. We talk to each other ad nauseam about our bad habits with no intention of change. This is the day and age when rehab and rebound is fashionable. In point of fact, our vulnerability with each other, our shared experiences, validate our intention to stay exactly as we are. Nobody wants a saint for a friend! We can't relate to people driven towards moral, physical, emotional and intellectual perfection. We would rather laugh with vulnerable failures than suffer with humorless perfectionists.

Evolutionary Argument Against Homosexuality, 4.0

2011-03-12T14:14:00.000-08:00

Consider four scenarios at the end of human civilization:

Scenario 1: Only one heterosexual man and one heterosexual woman remain of the entire human population. They overcome a natural lack of attraction for one another and reproduce, saving the human species.

Scenario 2: Only one gay man and one gay woman remain of the entire human population. They overcome a natural lack of attraction for one another and reproduce, saving the human species.

Scenario 3: Only two heterosexual men (or women) remain of the entire human population. They overcome a natural lack of attraction for one another for companionship, but cannot reproduce, and the human species perishes from the earth.

Scenario 4: Only two gay men (or women) remain of the entire human population. They need not overcome any lack of attraction (or perhaps do), but also cannot reproduce, and the human species perishes from the earth.

Analysis:

What is common in all scenarios is the possibility of a lack of subjective attraction to the only other human being left on the planet.

What is not common is that in scenarios 3 and 4, reproduction is impossible, because homosexuality has rendered the species sterile.

What is also not common is that in scenario's 2 and 3 the two people have had to overcome not just a lack of attraction for a particular partner, but for heterosexuality or homosexuality itself.

Conclusion: Homosexuality is unnatural because, whatever the condition of one's psyche, it will not save the species if evolution widdles the population down to two people of the same sex.

Various Objections to Christian Pacifism and Some Responses

2011-03-11T13:06:00.000-08:00

Objection 1 - Christian pacifism denies the government its rightful role and as such would undermine justice.

Even if one were to accept a paradigm of extreme separation, such as the Amish, how is it obvious that such a conclusion would follow. The Amish do not deny the government its permissive right to rule, and in principle submit to governmental authority. They simply live an ethic which meets the minimalist requirements of the state and then go far beyond it in their own private ethical interactions as a community.

If the objector has in mind a universal application of Christian pacifism, then this question becomes more complicated, but not much more. It seems that most who object to pacifism on these grounds are thinking in Kantian terms--namely, what if all people were pacifists? Would there be grounds for a justice system?

Origen's response to this is interesting. When Celsus, the scholarly pagan critic of Christianity asked him the same question, Origin replied, "If all people in the Empire became Christians, then God would protect the empire." That may seem a bit terse for most Christians today to accept.

But this objection seems to me to miss the point. The entire point of Jesus' kingdom is that it is incompatible with any other kingdom. Because of this, the state refuses to submit to Jesus' right to rule and thus creates its own justice system, borrowing its best ideas from the moral law. Law in nations is a practical outworking of the need for order, so that even in the state's appropriation of moral law it is in rebellion against God. The state wants God's law to serve it; it doesn't want to serve Him by keeping it. In constructing its laws the state is not trying to understand and love God; it is attempting to secure self-interest. This is why mercy is totally irrelevant to the application of state law, or perhaps should be if it is to be consistent. Is it any wonder that Jesus says his kingdom is new wine that is incompatible with the wineskins of human governance?

Note also that this objection can be turned on its head. The idea is that pacifism cannot be generally applied, and as such is impractical and void of justice, can just as easily be charged against just war theory. Surely it can be argued that faithfulness to just war criteria is impossible as well and thus just war theory is at least as impractical as Christian pacifism. I'd like someone to provide for me one example of a war, especially a modern war, in which one party was totally faithful to just war principles. If one can only be an imperfect Christian pacifist or an imperfect just war practitioner, which is preferable if one is to be a Christ follower?

Objection 2 - Just because American government is corrupted does not make it evil. Work is corrupted but it is not evil, etc.

This objection is disanalogous. The true analogy would be comparing not work to America, but prostitution as work with democracy as government, etc. Work in principle is not bad and neither is government in principle bad. But note that this is not what people are talking about. They are comparing work in principle to various corrupted manifestations of government. Also, not everything a Prostitute does is evil, but her whole profession is directed by an action that is evil. In the same way, not everything done by those exercising power in a democracy is bad, but I think it can be reasonably charged that the whole enterprise is bad.

Another way of looking at this is by asking what will happen in the redemptive process. The restoration process will not eliminate government or work, but will rebuild it. I take it that subsuming humanity under His redemptive purposes, God will not stop until he has remade our minds (free wills), our hands (how we work) and our governments (how we relate to one another). But to hear many people talk, America requires no redemption. For them, America is the source of redemption for the world, a city set on a hill.

It seems then that original goods, such as government, free will or work, retain their ontologically good status in a conceived ideal Christian world, where identifiable corruptions of these, such as rebellion, prostitution or democracy, will be wholly discarded. Think of it thus: In the garden, it is conceivable that Adam and Eve, for their work, could have done things like harvesting or painting. These specific activities are largely unchanged by the fall and eventual restoration of man. We harvest and paint now, and conceivably will do so in heaven. But what about governments? Perhaps we will still pave roads, but will we gather into town halls to figure out how to manage ourselves in heaven? Will we develop standing armies to protect our temporal interests? Will God have to be re-elected?

And here is the big question: Can the tools used to preserve the damned and fallen earthly city be useful in promoting and enlarging the borders of the City of God?

Objection 3 - The Bible does not exclude the possibility of self-defense or defense of others, especially in cases where our faith is not under attack.

Jesus in the Sermon, and in his example, does not make this distinction. And neither did the early Christians. I think Bonhoeffer's scathing critique of this is sufficient refutation against it and I recommend it highly, notwithstanding of course his own behavior in this regard. You will find his argument in his book "The Cost of Discipleship." I discuss some of those principles in another blog article: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-does-jesus-mean-by-loving-our.html

I also think there is an argument for various forms of defense, provided those defenses are not a violation of Jesus' injunction to go beyond simple retributive "eye for eye" responses. Clearly one defense is to move one's family to safety, even abandoning one's rightful property in order to do so. Christians did this frequently during the persecution age. Another response would be to absorb the evil so others can reach safety. A father could presumably distract and even occupy an assailant while his family got away, losing his own life in the process. This option seems reasonable even for a family during the imperial age attacked by Roman soldiers. But of course, assuming there is no option here because they are overwhelmed by superior force, then it would be unacceptable to do anything but accept a martyr's fate.

Objection 4 - Any relationship to the state is a contradiction of the separation mandate.

Not true! Surely there are many activities the Christian community can engage in that are wholly consistent with their identity as Kingdom people in a foreign land. If the people in this foreign land invite our votes on individual moral issues, for example, it will not be inconsistent for us to vote our consciences on those matters. And there are a whole variety of other issues. I acknowledge that a consistent Christian pacifist, if he clearly states his position on these matters, will not likely be voted into public office.

Objection 5 - What is a Christian justice system then?

In short, the cross of Jesus Christ, a stumbling block to many and foolishness to others. In the Christian community, the worst consequence for chronic sinful actions is excommunication. And excommunication is tantamount to turning someone over to the culture at large since they refuse to accept Christ's solution. And as I have said elsewhere, it is not the prerogative of the Church to deny the state its claim on the lives of criminals, but the Church can always plead its case for clemency. (This of course changes if the state requires us to do the killing, or so involves us that we would become culpable... for example, informing on the Jews during WWII.)

Again I would turn this around on the just war advocate. What is your sense of a Christian justice system? Is it Jesus and Democracy? Jesus and Socialism? Should mercy ever be offered? When and how much? What compromises are going to be acceptable here? Who is going to determine just and unjust wars? Elected officials or clergy or a combination? And which ones? How will they be qualified? The just war advocate exchanges the simplicity of the Sermon for the quagmire of spiritually gilded relativism and then justifies this move by wrenching the Sermon into agreement with his position through theological legerdemain. Sometimes only a scholar can see in the text the truth that isn't there!

Objection 6: Pacifism is just not manly.

Really? Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, has suggested that he could not follow a man he could beat up. Does it not seem obvious that if Mark Driscoll were around in the 1st century, he would have joined the rest in thinking Jesus a bit too effeminate to be the King of the Jews? Many people shared Driscoll's sentiments in the 1st century and that is why they tortured and crucified the incarnate God. God was apparently not quite manly enough for these people!

I also wonder why people who state this objection can in any way praise the early church martyrs. Is Pacifism only manly if there is no other option? Is it manly if you are persecuted for your faith, but less manly in resisting other evils? Was Jesus manly? Were the early Christians weak fools? Take the case often used to condemn pacifism: Someone breaks into your home and attacks your family. Defending them by force is the manly thing to do, right?

But let's imagine for a moment that the person breaking in does so because he hates Christians and wants to torment them in this way and it is clear that this is his reason (he announces it so that he can make his point, or you live in an area where Christians are under persecution and this is the most likely motive). It seems to me at the very least odd to suggest that a "manly" response is warranted in the case of random violence, and that usually the martyr response would be cowardly, but it is not in this case. Resisting this specific evil in this way is manly, but resisting just any evil in this way is cowardly. Perhaps it can be argued whether or not pacifism or armed resistance is the correct response to evil, but surely the courage of the martyr need not be impugned in either case.

Objection 7: Protecting lives trumps other moral principles, such as truth telling.

We hear that it is acceptable to lie about hiding Jews because it is more important to protect the innocent than it is to speak the truth. Okay, but why not apply this principle to the early Christians? When confronted by a Roman soldier who threatens to kill the members of your Church unless you deny your faith, why not lie to protect the innocent? Most Christians say that protecting lives in such a case becomes less important than maintaining one's Christian witness. My question is simply, why does this principle not always govern our decisions? Why do we not think, when confronted by evil of all kinds, "Am I proclaiming Christ in all I do and in all I say?" So that hiding Jews or responding to war or any evil that encroaches upon us, our primary response is the response of Christ in all things. It occurs to me that many Christians could function without reference to Christ at all on the question of war. Jesus is frankly irrelevant to the politics of war for most Christians. His is merely a non-threatening and thankfully innocuous private ethic.

Evolutionary Argument Against Homosexuality, 3.0

2011-03-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

A quick follow up to the two previous articles on this point. Remember the idea here is that it may be consistent with an evolutionary model to condemn homosexuality as unnatural. And what is unnatural may very well be deemed "bad" in a wholly naturalistic sense.

It occurs to me that the gay community might have recourse to a rather strange argument, which would sound something like this:

Homosexuality is not an unnatural phenomenon because it occurs within a species that is psychologically complex. Human beings show a range of sexual attractions. An individual human being might be attracted to some traits of the opposite sex and some traits of the same sex. And so, a homosexual might very well be one who both participates with nature's heterosexual mandate at one time and who does not at another time. But why then call him unnatural?

Of course, if this is true, then the homosexual is really bisexual. He or she is attracted to the opposite sex, but in an inconsistent manner.

But if this is to be the response, then perhaps there are no homosexuals. If it is true that there are no true homosexuals (as in those with no attraction to the opposite sex at all), then the evolutionary argument against homosexuality would simply suggest that nature has produced no real homosexuals, but only confused or imperfect heterosexuals, and that they exist under the misnomer "homosexual."

But of course if that is the case, then several disturbing implications emerge for the homosexual community.

The first is that attraction to various traits of the same sex can be viewed as mere distortions of heterosexuality. What we have termed "homosexuality" reduces to a range of sexual interests that by degrees denies or distorts heterosexuality. Which then brings us back to the Cheetah analogy; there are healthy Cheetah's and there are genetically broken Cheetah's. If the norm of nature is four legged Cheetah's that can run fast, then clearly the three legged Cheetah is broken. If the norm of nature is heterosexuality, then surely distortions can be seen as expressions of human brokenness as well.

The second is that nature clearly beckons one to consistent heterosexuality in order to ensure procreation. As in beastiality (sex with animals) and necrophilia (sex with the dead), such a departure from natures requirement of heterosexuality will undermine one's ability to survive (in the Darwinian sense... in the sense of passing genetics on to the next generation). Why not just say that the confused heterosexual (homosexual) is sometimes aligned with nature and sometimes not. But is that in itself natural, especially if one is by degrees moving further and further away from heterosexual interests?

The third implication seems to be that, as inconsistent heterosexuals, homosexuals can be "converted," which is something of course that the homosexual community responds to with howls of anger. What is wrong with us now, they say? They insist that they are born as homosexuals and as such their sexuality is as natural as anyone else's.

In effect, their response to "gay conversion" is to loudly proclaim that being born a certain way ensures that it is okay to be that way. But surely evolutionary science would disagree here. Just because one is born a certain way does not mean it is acceptable to be that way. Sociopath's must be "fixed." Alcoholics, though potentially born that way, have to be contained. Pedophile's must be contained as well, though it is conceivable that each are born with merely broken psyche's. Are we to say that it is okay to have a broken psyche because one is born that way?

Note that all of this is relevant only if the premise, "There are no pure homosexuals" is true. And if there are pure homosexuals, then surely their behavior, on evolutionary grounds, is all the more unnatural (as was argued previously).

Evolutionary Argument Against Homosexuality 2.0

2011-02-27T20:42:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of objections to my previous argument denouncing homosexuality as unnatural. I owe these to some thoughtful logic students with Fresno Pacific University.

1. Perhaps homosexuality is natural, in the sense that other species seem to have homosexual tendencies, and in the sense that homosexuality may be nature's way of selectively reducing the population.

There are two arguments here. First, the idea is that since other creatures display homosexual tendencies, then it must be natural for human beings to do so. But even in the case of animals that show homosexual tendencies the same argument I've enunciated could be made--namely, that for them to live consistently as homosexual monkeys (or whatever) will be for them to be weeded out by the evolutionary process. Why not then call their homosexual preference something that exists in violence against evolution, and as such is unnatural?

As for the second argument, perhaps it is true that nature "plans" for contingencies like overpopulation. In sterilizing a segment of the population, overpopulation is diminished. Perhaps. But if this is true, then one can ask a simple follow up question: If nature can selectively reduce the population, weeding out "broken" human beings, then why can we not participate with nature in doing this? In other words, why not simply determine all the "broken" human beings and kill them all now? Why wait until resources in the diminishing world are scarce? And surely we can include homosexuals in this category. This seems to confirm my position rather than threatening it. Let's say that it is "natural" to weed out the "unnatural" in evolution.

2. Homexuality is merely an obstacle to reproduction but this obstacle does not constitute an "unnatural" impediment to reproduction. After all, homosexuals can rely on heterosexuality to reproduce themselves. For example, two gay couples can agree that they will temporarily set aside their homosexuality in order to cooperate in securing their survival in their progeny.

An analogy was offered on this point. What if the first humans were heterosexual but not attracted to one another? Would they not merely have to set aside their natural desires in order to secure reproduction? In the same way, homosexual human beings would also have to set aside their natural desires in order to cooperate with nature in reproduction. The question was, what is unnatural about either case?

The similarity of course is in the area of desire--neither party desires the party necessary for reproduction. The glaring difference is that one is a problem in heterosexual partner preference and the other is a problem with nature's heterosexual mandate itself. One is resistance to reproducing with a particular person of the opposite sex; the other is resistance to the opposite sex. One opposes the fruits of nature; the other opposes nature itself. Surely the two cases are not analogous. One complains that he doesn't like the food he is offered; the other is repulsed by food altogether. If he is starving, can he make himself eat, though it is repugnant to him? Sure, but all the while it will be contrary to his nature and as such a total frustration of his happiness. What can we say about a human being, made by nature to survive in a certain way, but who finds all of his natural desires in a contrary position to the way in which he was made to survive? Perhaps it is not innacurate to call him, or at least his desires, "unnatural."

Let us compare the two instincts introduced above a little more fully in order to see what happens when one is resistant to the dictates of nature with respect to good darwinian survival:

There are people that do not like certain foods. And perhaps there are even people that do not like food altogether, but in most cases we consider such people psychologically broken, as in the case of anorexics. It seems tacitly acceptable that an aversion to food itself would be unnatural. We even think that people who like food but don't like the calories associated with food are somehow broken and try to fix them... ie bulimics.

There are also people that don't like certain members of the opposite sex. But we also know there are people that don't like the opposite sex altogether, as in the case of homosexuals. Does it not seem equally acceptable to suggest that an aversion to heterosexual sexuality is also unnatural?

In both cases, the person repulsed by the very behavior necessary for survival may be deemed unnatural. The people repulsed by various natural options (the people who don't like some foods or some heterosexual options) are not committed to a course of action that would destroy them in principle. And for them to eat or to engage in heterosexual sex is not going to be qualitatively against their most fundamental inclinations. On the other hand, for someone who hates food to eat or for a homosexual to engage in heterosexual sex is for them to do something that is against their fundamental inclinations and also requires that they tacitly grant that nature requires behavior for which they are not naturally inclined.

Here is a revised and clear argument that I believe eliminates any confusion regarding the argument:

Premise 1: If we are not obedient to the dictates of nature, we will not reproduce.
Premise 2: Among the dictates of nature is heterosexuality.
Premise 3: That which does not obey the dictates of nature is unnatural.
Premise 4: Homosexuals reproduce (that is, when they act contrary to their natural inclinations).
Conclusion: But that entails that they... 1. Obey the heterosexual mandate, and... 2. As such, acknowledge that homosexuality is unnatural.

Lady Blah Blah

2011-02-23T20:40:00.000-08:00

I know... really clever title to this blog, right? What I'm interested in discussing today is the argument in Lady Gaga's new song, "You Were Born This Way."

The key line is, "... you're on the right track, baby, you were born this way..." And it goes on to talk about gays, bisexuals, transvestites, etc. Real shocker that she has this kind of message and agenda.

But here is the latent argument within the song:

Premise 1: If you are born to do ... X , then it is acceptable for you to do X.
Premise 2: You were born to do ... X.
Conclusion: It is acceptable (morally) for you to do X.

My response here is a simple question regarding premise 1: Why should we believe it is obvious that if we are born a certain way that it must be morally acceptable for us to be that way? Does it really follow?

Let's play with a few examples:

Premise 1: If you are born to be a pedophile, then it is acceptable to be a pedophile.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be pedophiles.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a pedophile.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be a sociopath, then it is acceptable to be a sociopath.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be sociopaths.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a sociopath.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be homophobic, then it is acceptable to be homophobic.
Premise 2: Some are born to be homophobic.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be homophobic.

Now, of course Lady Gaga is no professional philosopher, but that doesn't mean we should accept muddle headed non-sense simply because it is accompanied by a driving beat.

Lecture Series: Lecture 18: The Problem of Unity and Diversity and The Trinity

2011-01-11T21:58:00.000-08:00

Belief in the notion of love requires a robust philosophical answer to the problem of unity and diversity, and the only worldview that can provide such an answer is Christianity.

Perhaps the most fundamental philosophical problem is the problem of the one and the many. Is there only one thing or one will in the universe, or is there a diversity of things or wills and no meaningful unity in the universe? Early philosophers like Thales believed that everything was essentially unified--his view was that everything was water. Others concluded that everything was essentially separated, like Democritus' view of atomism. To this day the question holds our interest.

There are scientists in our day who believe that we are essentially products of chance, and chance is by definition the antithesis to any unifying principle. If we are products of chance, then obviously there is no agency that knits the universe together. As many consistent atheists have noted, we are merely accidents that have been "thrown into" this random interrelation of energy and matter. Bertrand Russell, the famous British atheist proclaimed confidently that the destiny of the universe is material particularization. Any stability or order we perceive in the universe will eventually disintegrate.

If men like Russell are right, then only one ethical choice remains--live for today and live for oneself. Of course logically, even this conclusion can be questioned if Russell's nihilism is true. Nihilism, by definition, means nothing matters. But if nothing matters, then even the view that a person should live a selfish life is another example of the irrelevant and impotent prattling of insignificant molecules. The curious thing about believing that there are only particulars in the universe is that to do so causes one to lose the value of those particulars. Relativism in the long run is meaningless without some stable and unchanging center by which relative position may be both anchored and understood. If the world is merely filled with random opinions about this or that matter and no truth can be found in them, then ideas are not relative to anything. They are mere by-products of synapses randomly firing in a vacuous ether of uncoordinated happenings. They are not relative happenings because they are not related to anything. They are pure, individual, and irreproducible occurrences, as men like Hume suspected. In an atheist universe, we are not only alone, but even the thought of our loneliness is also alone, isolated from all other thoughts in its vanishing pointlessness. Every thought is jettisoned into the unknown, unimportant and uncoordinated ocean of nihilistic noise, for nihilism is not the absence of something, but is rather the presence of everything but meaning in none of it. The Christian at least dignifies their enemies by arguing with them. The atheist would have us all believe that no man or woman does anything other than litter the universe.

But if the atheists are right and the universe is merely a collection of random happenings, then one can find no meaning in either the whole or the parts. Most cope with this by simply asserting individual will against the universe. As Crane's poem says it, we can shout to the universe that we exist, but it will only answer back, "yes, but the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." The atheist is forced to be a champion of individuality and can offer no meaningful unity. Thus love becomes impossible, or reduces to individuals deluding themselves into believing that it is something more than meaningless and isolated chemical reactions in a purposeless universe.

The Pantheist has the opposite problem of the atheist. His philosophical foundation eliminates the possibility of any meaningful individuality. The interesting thing in this worldview is that there is little attempt to hide this. Pantheists will confidently proclaim that one must abjure the need for individual dignity and embrace the whole. The problem we all face is that we are caught up in a powerful illusion. We actually believe we have a self, and worse, that that self deserves to enlarge its boundaries and become more perfectly self actualized. The Pantheist believes that through various spiritual practices and eventually through birth and rebirth, the individual soul will be absorbed into the universal and all permeating essence of all things.

In the Bhagava Gita, the Hindu holy text, a prince named Arjuna is visited by the Avatar of Brahman called Krishna. Krishna appears individually to Arjuna to lead him in the path of enlightenment. He teaches Arjuna that individuality is a powerful illusion. Now apart from the logical problem here (Why would not Arjuna simply conclude that Krishna also is a part of the illusion?), the real issue is the naked denial of individuality. Love requires an object and a subject and in Pantheism there is only one reality. Love is a matter of relationship, one person relating to another. But if there is no person there, in reality, then surely there can be no love. In Pantheism an individual appeal is made to embrace the idea that individuality doesn’t exist. But it should be clear that if singularity exists without multiplicity, then there can be no love.

Only the Christian worldview can hold unity and diversity together, and the reason it can is because Christian teaching is rooted in the nature and character of a God who is unified and diverse. The Triune God is the source of unity and diversity. Without a Triune concept of God, one is left to turn to other worldviews, none of which can provide a rational foundation for unity and diversity.

Consider how practical this matter can be. In governments that go wrong, the tension between unity and diversity is not maintained. In communism, there is a kind of unity, but individuality is lost. The state is more important than an individual. In a dictatorship, the will of one man is imposed upon the populace, and as such individual dignity is compromised for one uniform voice. One will absorbs the collective of wills. Democracy has the opposite problem. In a democracy, often disagreement is the only agreement. People boldly exercise their right to voice their individual views, and special interest groups often try to manipulate the political process in order to secure their own individual needs without much concern for the common good. Capitalism works well in a democracy because it rewards individual competition. The individual will is held to be more valuable than a sustainable unity of wills. The extreme example of a governmental system that denies unity for individuality would be either libertarianism or anarchy. In the case of anarchy the concept of a common will is totally abandoned and individual survival or advantage alone is sought.

The point here is that in something as mundane as a governmental system we see that the core problem is a failure to harmonize with the Triune reality of complete unity and diversity simultaneously.

And even more practical than governmental systems, consider the simple everyday reality of interpersonal relationships. In bad marriages, for example, unity or diversity diminishes over time. Some marriages polarize naturally, and in such cases individuality is preserved, but meaningful unity is lost. Some marriages are places of endless contention, with both individuals passionately asserting their right to be right. Obviously in such cases individuality is preserved at the cost of unity. In other marriages, one partner forfeits her will to the other, or is overpowered by the other. A marriage can be a place where unity is forged at the cost of one person’s individuality.

If we really were made in the image of a God who is the perfection of unity and diversity, then we would expect that our hearts would yearn both for connection to God and others and we would expect to find in ourselves a desire for the realization of our highest individual potential.

Divine love unifies the distinct while giving distinction to the unified.

(For a treatment of how the Trinity idea provides meaning to the whole educational enterprise, see the article titled “The Trinity and Education.”)

Lecture Series: Lecture 17: Philosophical Problems with Islam

2011-01-11T21:56:00.000-08:00

It must be obvious that Christianity and Islam are in an adversarial relationship towards each other. And it is just philosophically inane for any people pleasing postmodernist to suggest that their differences are not that significant. Oprah and her largely ignorant legions try to convince the world that the differences that exist between religions like Islam and Christianity do not really exist, or are superficial, even cosmetic, differences.

What I find striking about this attitude is the arrogance in it, which of course is ironic since it is meant as a countermeasure to the arrogance of "one truth" religious positions. And the arrogance of Oprah and others who make this argument is much worse, in my estimation. First, she reduces all religious claims to mere matters of taste. But why should we believe that she has the right to do that? Religions claim that their understanding of truth is correct. Surely it is arrogant to suggest that all of these people the world over who think they have discovered the truth about God, the afterlife, morality and the like are merely wrong to think so. How does she know? Why not just think her arrogant for thinking she is right that no one can be right?

Secondly, her arrogance is revealed by the implications of such a statement. She knows what all religions teach, down to the fine details of each world system, and she knows that really everyone believes the same thing, even though all of their best scholars would disagree on this point. No matter. Apparently we should trust Oprah over Muslim and Christian scholars who claim these differences are significant. We must conclude that Oprah has a near divine level of knowledge to be able to supplant the best scholars of the worlds various religions, especially Islam and Christianity.

Thankfully, thinking people don't take Oprah seriously on this point. We simply must recognize that the differences between Christianity and Islam amount to a near complete incompatibility between the two religions. With that factual starting point, let us explore the simple question, why Christianity and not Islam?

I will attempt to organize this by discussing doctrines of the Islamic faith that I believe are at the very least problematic, and thus create serious doubt in the truthfulness of Islam.

Doctrine 1 - Mercy and Justice in Islam

While Christianity can account for the mercy and justice of God, Islam cannot.

There are two angles to take at this point. The first involves the actual transaction when God offers mercy and the other involves the process of "earning" God's mercy.

If Islam is correct, then it is clear that God need not punish his son for our sins or any other human representative for that matter. God needs only to "commute" the sentence, laying aside the guilt and all punishments associated with it. And while at first that seems reasonable--after all, when we forgive someone, it seems a wholly subjective affair, in which we just say, "okay, I forgive you." We don't say that there needs to be some just countermeasure to our actions. We don't go looking for our neighbor's cat to offer sacrifice as payment for the forgiveness we offered him. So while this seems to appeal to our common sense, it is an inadequate understanding of justice and mercy.

For example, if my neighbor has stolen from me and I forgive him, it is not as if penalty has not occurred. I have been punished already, in a sense, for his crimes, but that in itself is not just. Surely God will require fairness in all things, including this exchange. It is simply not right for a man to "get away" with stealing from another simply because he has been forgiven.

In short, for God to forgive men, he will have to stop being just. It is simply unjust for God to allow the universe to absorb the sins of men. The damage is done and cannot be undone. What can be done is a just recompense for these actions. But in Islam, God simple "turns aside" his wrath, or "looks away" from the damage done.

Perhaps a Muslim could answer this by suggesting that in mercy God has allowed a time for people to restore justice by doing what is right to compensate for the sins they have committed. In other words, God establishes a works system that "pays down" the debt owed to him. But taking this to the end, it must be clear that if men have time to overcome their bad deeds by performing sufficient good deeds, then they are merely keeping their end of God's bargain. God would be required, in pure justice, to let them into heaven because they fulfilled the conditions He himself set out for them to fulfill. It seems to be the case that mercy need not fit into the equation, since man is merely doing what he was rightly supposed to do with the time afforded and earning his way back to God. And practically it bears noting that a Muslim probably wouldn't labor under these conditions with any sense of the mercy of God affording him all the necessary time, resources and support to achieve the appropriate good works. He would most likely labor under a crushing burden of fear and uncertainty, with the thought of God's justice rather than any sense of mercy prominent in his mind.

Islam has a pendulum problem here: When concerns about the place of mercy in a works oriented system are raised, the Islamic answer is that God is really forgiving the sins of the past; and when concerns about the justice of merely "laying aside" these sins are raised, the Islamic answer is the justice of a works oriented system. Concerns about God's justice are solved by giving us only a just God while concerns about God's mercy are solved by giving us only a merciful God. And yet among the 99 names of Allah, the Qur'an makes it clear that He is both merciful and just. This is a serious logical problem.

This matter cannot be deferred to mystery either, and the reason surely is that the Qur'an explains God's justice and mercy.

A religious mystery is an area indicated but not fully explained (such as God's role in specific evils, if any). These areas need not be contradictory, and presumably Islam includes some of these.

But that is not what we see in the matter of mercy and justic in God. It is plainly explained that salvation is earned and that prior sins are simply laid aside. But these are clearly logical problems, as has already been explained. It is philosophically irresponsible after these observations are made to seek refuge in the notion of "God's mysteries."

Doctrine 2 - The Derivative Nature of Islamic Doctrine

The best ideas in Islam are borrowed from Judaism and Christianity. If one were to take out of the Qur'an every reference to the Old Testament story, one would find the Qur'an a very thin book indeed. This is so striking that anyone who reads the Qur'an will be amazed at the lack of original material in it. It will almost read like a Jewish cult rather than a separate religious tradition.

The troubling part in the Qur'an is the additional or manipulated material, such as the role of Ismael, the legal changes and the rejection of Jesus as the Son of God. On these grounds Christians must of course reject Islam, but surely there is much the two religions share in common.

Doctrine 3 - Evidentiary Problems with The Islamic Doctrine of Sin

One of the teachings in Islam that is at odds with Christianity and Judaism is the doctrine of sin. Muslims are essentially Pelagian (the Christian heresy that taught we do not inherit a disposition toward sin). In Islam, people are born with a capacity to keep God's law. There is no doctrine of "original sin." A person can, in theory, live a sinless life, provided he or she tries hard enough. This of course is immediately rejected by Christian teaching.

The problem here seems obvious. If we are born with a capacity for sinlessness, why are there not more sinless people in the world? To say that we fall into sin merely because of "peer pressure" is inadequate as an explanation of pervasive sin in the world. If human beings have the ability to do right, then the assumption is that they have knowledge of what is right. And if they have knowledge of what is right, and the capacity to do what is right, it follows that no exposure to what is wrong need deter them from doing what is right. In fact, if anything it would give them more incentive to do right, since there are so many examples of ruined lives all around them.

Does it not seem that the cleanest explanation for our experience--namely, that everyone we know is a sinner--is the Christian doctrine of original sin? G.K. Chesterton said it this way, "The only doctrine for which Christians have ample empirical evidence is the doctrine of original sin." What he meant is that daily we are exposed to evil both in our own lives and in the lives of others. The best explanation for the fact that sin comes so naturally to us is that humanity is messed up. The evidence supports Christian doctrine and not Islamic doctrine.

Doctrine 4 - Islam and Unity and Diversity

There is no love in Allah which he can share with anyone. Of the 99 names for God in Islam, the name love is strangely missing. The reason is clearly that he need not show love because he does not experience love in his own nature. Only a Triune God can experience love. Only when there is a dynamic interaction of wills can there be love. There must be a subject/subject relation in order to have love. When we speak of "loving ourselves," we must surely mean that there is something about us that is worthy of loving. Imagine for a moment that you were the only being in all of existence. Could you love anything then, standing in infinite space, with no other being in the universe with whom to relate? Surely love is meaningless without relationship and relationship is meaningless without another will that can converse with you. What would love mean then if it cannot be given to anyone? In Islam, God is alone, and none can understand or appreciate him. His creation is a feature of His sovereign power and not an expression of love. God is not creating to disclose himself to creation so that they might know and love Him. God creates to ensure the implementation of his unilateral will.

The question is this: If God need not bother about love, then why should anyone else? If God is not winning people by love, then why should his followers be constrained to do anything different? If God exists to enforce a set of directives without love, then his people can surely do the same.

Lewis once said that "monstrous nations have a monstrous conception of God." Is it any wonder most people the world over would not want to live in any consistently Muslim country, including probably most Muslims.

Doctrine 5 - Islamic View of History

It is because of the Islamic conception of God that Islamic history is what it is. Islam spreads by the blood of its enemies; Christianity, by the blood of its founder and His disciples for generations. Surely this by itself tells us something about the practical outworking of the ideas of each system. Islam spreads by conquest. Christianity spreads by martyrdom. Islam conquered the Mediterranean world in a short time using the methods of Alexander, Julius and other conquerors. Christianity conquered the Mediterranean world in a way unseen up until that point or since--by a sacrifice that transformed the heart of Rome. Islam contains and controls foreign ideas; Christianity penetrates and transforms them. People submit to Islam out of fear; they submit to Christianity out of love.

It is true that Christians turned at times to the efficiency of conquest in order to spread its position in the world. Thankfully, Christians now know that those times constitute a bold departure from the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are to be confessed among the Christian community as periods of great internal disease and sinfulness. You will wait a long time before you hear any Muslim scholar admit that the conquests of North Africa, Persia, Spain and Constantinople were sins in Islam.

Doctrine 6 - Islamic View of Salvation

In short, your performance saves you. We have already discussed the logical problem here. If you can perform your way back into God's good graces, then salvation cannot be a matter of mercy. If we can perform so as to overcome our sins, then the granting of salvation is a just recompense for having performed as one ought to perform.

The other dimension to this is the psychological state of the performer. Will he be burdened by fear or freedom in his pursuit of moral excellence? He can never be assured of his salvation until a sufficient number of good deeds compensate for any bad deeds he has committed. What if he runs out of time? What if the quality of his good deeds is not good enough though he has perhaps done many? And what will his lifelong motivations be?

Surely the Muslim operating in this performance mindset will see threat of punishment and promise of reward as his singular motivation in life. He will become an ethical egoist. Life will be about his own comfort in the end. He is not trying to know and love God and enjoy him forever. He can't know or love God since God is unmatched and unknowable. Thus his entire motivation with respect to God is to secure some payoff from him and to stave off any punishments coming from such a powerful being.

The curious thing about this is that even atheistic ethicists recognize the inferiority of ethical egoism. It turns everything in the universe into an excuse to feed self-interest alone. But what if everyone felt this way? What if everyone in my life only cared about me because I was somehow enriching their experience in life? There would be no one who could think of me as a "good" in and of myself. Strangely this attitude is consistent with the Muslim notion of God, who in effect has turned us into things to be used to achieve his purposes rather than subjects to be loved for who we are. But then the Muslim God should not be surprised when they respond to Him in precisely the same fashion, turning Him into a source of personal payoff rather than someone to love for who He is.

Doctrine 7 - Islamic View of Heaven

In keeping with the Islamic notion of God and the performance relationship of his subjects, heaven is merely a sensual reward for those who keep God's laws. There are virgins, succulent foods and serene scenes in God's oasis. In essence, one is given a cleaned up and exaggerated version of the pleasures of earth forever and ever. This of course all fits with an egoist ethic. The problem is that the egoist ethic is dreadful!

Lecture Series: Lecture 16: Evolution v. Creationism

2011-01-11T21:55:00.000-08:00

And now we begin an assessment of the question of evolution. Since I am better equipped to handle philosophical questions than scientific ones, let me offer a philosophical point to begin:

Evolution is a tautology. Remember a tautology is a statement that is definitional and not explanatory, but it is often cited as an explanation. In other words, tautologies are definitions masquerading as arguments. An example of a tautology would be, "Either God exists or He doesn't." This statement is necessarily true, but it is useless and uninteresting. Another example would be, "a bachelor is an unmarried male." Yep, but again useless and philosophically void.

Here is the tautology of evolution: The confident evolutionist says, "Only the best creatures survive." And I ask, "What makes them the best?" And he says, "Because they survive." Or put plainly: "The evolved creatures are the ones that survive and the reason they are the most evolved is that they survive."

Of course it is plain when stated this way that evolution as a theory has virtually nothing to do with this tautological evolution. Evolution as a process would not be interested in ensuring that the "best" would survive. Of course this has to do with what we mean by the "best" creatures. And surely this is the center of my point--namely, that evolution merely defines "best" as the "survivor." But then the theory of evolution seems to indicate that living creatures began with a simple common ancestor and "developed" into the spectacular variety of living things we now encounter, among which are creatures that are more intelligent, altruistic, and in that sense "better" than their distant ancestors. In other words, evolution as a theory suggests that things are progressing through the ages by the refining power of natural selection. But is this so, other than merely definitionally? (in other words, because they tell us it is happening)

If evolution as a theory is true then it would not ensure "refinement" in the least. It would only ensure value-neutral change. One could not watch the change occur and then say after the fact that it was an improvement, because that would imply that evolution is a perfecting process and would beg the whole question.

In other words, evolution, at least as it has been explained by evolutionists, ensures only that random changes in an environment meet random changes in organisms, and when by happy accident the creature has the traits to survive in that environment, then it passes its genes to the next generation. That is it! It seems to me obvious that this kind of process would not "care" about producing something better over time. In fact over time this planet will become uninhabitable to humans, leaving only bacteria to survive. At that point, is it reasonable to suggest that bacteria are the "most evolved" creatures? Or consider this another way. Perhaps there are aliens in the universe whose intelligence exceeds ours at least as much as ours exceeds that of bacteria. Are they the most evolved, even if in colonizing our planet they should be destroyed by a simple virus?

And now we turn to the matter of evolutionary science and how a Christian can respond to it. First, let's establish a few key terms, as we are want to do in this class:

1. Evolution: Organisms develop in complexity over time, descending from a common, albeit simple, ancestor.

2. Natural selection: Only organisms suited to the environment survive to pass their genetics to the next generation. This is perhaps a more accurate definition of evolution itself, given the explanations most generally offered.

3. Theistic evolution: God is the creative causal agent behind the evolutionary process.

4. Punctuated equilibrium: The view of Stephen J. Gould that genetic changes in organisms happen so rapidly that the intermediary forms have little time to leave a fossil deposit.

5. Big bang cosmology: There is a residual echo of the big bang (traceable expansion, slowing), which demonstrates an absolute beginning to the universe.

6. Law of biogenesis: Creatures produce after their own kind. Chickens produce chickens and humans produce humans.

7. Second Law of Thermodynamics: Heat loss and loss of order occur in a closed system. Also referred to as entropy.

8. Irreducible complexity: Some organs/organisms do not appear to have any conceivable potentiality. In other words, some things in nature do not appear to be able to go through a developmental or emergent process. All the necessary parts need to be in place simultaneously (such as the bacterial flagellum, the eye, etc), which implies that the information system that coded for the creation of these systems (DNA) had to be in place simultaneously as well.

9. Mutations: Mistakes in genetic duplication. These create changes in the way an organism functions. This is said to be the mechanism of evolutionary development. Generally this would require a slow process of genetic differentiation to create new systems, thus creating significant innovative changes (dolphin-like mammal becoming a land-going mammal, etc).

10. Spontaneous generation: The view that life on earth came from the constituent chemicals of which the earth is made. It is said that non-living chemicals "came to life" as a result of a random interaction of these chemicals with an external energy source (such as lightening).

In confronting the matter of evolution, the Christian must face his most significant evidentiary challenge--namely, the age of the earth. Of course this is a significant problem because the Scriptures seem to indicate a rather young earth (6 - 15 thousand years).

What evidence is there of age? The two primary sources of this information come from the rocks (geological evidence) and from stars (cosmological evidence).

Radiometric dating is the process of discerning the age of rocks from the half-life of various elements within them. Christians are fond of claiming that radiometric dating is unreliable, and since I am no scientist, it occurs to me that I would not have the authority to counter or confirm this claim. For the sake of argument, let us assume that radiometric dating is roughly accurate. If it is, then surely the earth cannot be as young as Genesis indicates. It would have to be much older, on the order of 4-5 billion years.

Carbon dating looks at the half-life of carbon in a sample to find its approximate age. I'm told that it works only to about 50,000 years since that is the longest possible age signature carbon can leave.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for the age of the earth is the cosmological evidence. We know that the closest star to the earth is our sun, which is roughly 93 million miles away from us. That means that the light from our sun left 8 minutes ago. We are looking at a developing photograph that was taken 8 minutes ago. If that weren't amazing enough, consider that many of the stars we see in the night sky ceased to exist many millions of years ago, since the light traveling from those stars left millions of years ago. When we finally see the supernova of those stars, it is a time delay of several million years. Surely this indicates a very old universe indeed!

These evidentiary points cannot be brushed aside. They require some reasonable response from Christians. Now I highlight a few Christian responses to the age problem:

1. Theistic Evolution: Some Christians have adopted a compromise position between creation and evolution known as Theistic Evolution. The basic idea is that the universe is old and that God has chosen to use the slow process of evolution to create. God is the creative force behind phenomena that are as yet unexplained by evolutionary science, such as the origin of life from non-living chemicals, beneficial mutations and order from disorder.

One problem with TE is that it must turn the early Genesis account into an allegory (a symbolic story, or poem) of creation. One wonders where the allegory ends? One wonders whether Adam and Eve were real people?

Another problem with TE is that God is seen to use a method of creation that seems unworthy of Him. Why would God use such a slow and even imperfect process to bring about the emergence of man? Surely the Genesis account indicates that God, who is perfect, creates a world that is perfect, or at least harmonious, and then it deteriorates from that state into the imperfect state we see now. Evolution would seem to suggest the exact opposite paradigm.

And finally, TE would also involve the messy struggle for survival as its method of "creation." The Genesis account seems to indicate that death is a result of the fall and not that it is a tool of creation.

Having said all of this, perhaps there are ways of facing such challenges and offering a plausible Theistic Evolutionary model. Certainly many intelligent Christians have adopted it as their answer to the age question.

2. The Day Age Theory: This would be the interpretive framework for Genesis supplied by the Theistic Evolutionist. It is said that the days of Genesis represent epochs of time. The word"yom" in Hebrew can have such a meaning, and as such it perhaps refers to an era or epoch. A strong counter to this is the Exodus 20 reference, in which the plural for "yom" is used, as in "In six days (yamim) God created the heavens and the earth..." Any time the plural "yamim" is used in Scripture, meaning "days," it refers to a succession of literal 24 hour days. This would seem to be a problem for the Day Age Theorist. Nevertheless, such an objection may reasonably be faced, thus giving the Day Age Theory stronger footing.

3. The Gap Theory: An unusual theory, to say the least. It is built on the notion that a gap of perhaps billions of years exists between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... and the earth was formless and void..." The contention is that God created the world, then rendered it formless and void as the result of His judgment on a pre-Adamic race. The earth was in this formless and void condition for billions of years, after which God begins a recreation. This is not a widely held theory due to the fact that it reads far too much into the phrase "formless and void."

4. The Literalist Theory: It is still maintained by some "short age" creationists that God could have created the world in 6 literal 24 hour periods of time. They maintain that the matter of age is a matter of appearance--that is, God created the universe in a state of material maturity. It is said that God could have built a history into the rocks of the earth as well as a history into the Cosmos. The evidence for this is the maturity of the garden and the maturity of Adam and Eve. They were not created as fetuses, but as fully grown adults. In that sense, the chicken indeed came before the egg for the literalist.

The problem with the literalist theory is its relationship to the evidence for age and its explanations for the appearance of age. For example, in order for the universe to give an appearance of several billion years when it is only 6000 years old would require God in a sense deceiving us as to the light signature of distant stars. We see a light signature of stars 7 million light years away, and yet those stars presumably don't exist. It seems that such a theory would require that as we look at the night sky, the only stars that really exist are the the ones at or within the universal boundary of 6000 years, indicating that all the rest are "representations" of stars. And that would indicate that we are functioning within something like a giant "dome," as in the movie "The Truman Show."

Or it could be that the stars exist, but God accelerated the light to arrive on earth and then slowed the light again to the constant rate for light that we now know.

And consider the fossil question. This theory would indicate either that dinosaurs lived only 6000 years ago or that God deposited fossils of creatures that never really existed. But both strain the limits of credibility.

5. Schroeder's Theory (Quasar Theory): Perhaps not a widely known theory because it requires an ability to conceptualize Einstein's theory of relativity and its implications with respect to time. Perhaps the best thing to do here would be to link you to Schroeder's article on this: http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48951136.html

In essence, this article indicates that the universe looks 15 billion years old from our vantage point in the expansion of the universe. Our relative position in the universe causes us to see the universe as that old, but if we were located at or near the point of the big bang, events would be radically accelerated. To get an idea of this, imagine for a moment teleporting to a distant galaxy on a planet where time didn't move as quickly. You are there, from the perspective of that planet, for 10 years and then you teleport back to earth only to learn that everyone you knew was now in their 80's. You aged ten years while they aged 60+ years. Einstein taught us that time does not function the same everywhere in the universe. In some places in the universe an orange could theoretically last for months. At the point of the big bang, events are rapidly accelerated, but if you were there you would not perceive this rapid change.

I personally like Schroeder's theory and think that it's merit lies in that if true it would demonstrate that the universe is both young and old at the same time. Looking forward from the point of the big bang would grant a short time frame, but looking back from our position in the expansion and slowing of the universe grants a long time frame.

So is it true that modern evolutionary science is at odds with Christian faith? Theistic Evolution, Short Age Creation and Schroeder's Theory offer plausible methods of resolving the age considerations within the creationist model. The real question is this: Is modern science at odds with modern science? In other words, is the evolutionary theory consistent with modern science? It seems the answer is a resounding no!

Now I would like to discuss a few problems with Naturalism:

1. The mind is the product of purposeless chance. We have discussed this already, so I won't labor the point. Suffice it to say that if our minds are the products of a purposeless process, there can be no objective reason to think that in using them we are doing something purposeful. But if there is no purpose to using the mind, then science surely is left without a motivational foundation. We can do it perhaps to cure boredom, but surely a party is more fun than the science lab.

2. All of human history is moving toward total annihilation. This is another point that has been raised, but it surely must be the case that if all of human history will become nothing more than a particularized junkyard of inert matter, then there can be no meaning in the things we are doing with our time now. In point of fact, if naturalism is true, then the universe is nothing but totally randomized shrapnel from a giant explosion. But if this is really true, then one might as well spend one's time finding pleasure in whatever will afford it rather than doing science.

3. Another problem in evolutionary "science" is that assumptions are passed of as observational facts.

For example, spontaneous generation is passed off as fact when every scientific test employed to confirm it has actually reinforced the fact that the opposite is true--namely, that life exploding from its constituent chemicals is impossible. Life does not spontaneously generate from non-living chemicals. Nature herself is insistent on this point. This is no canon of religious dogmatism (stubborn belief). Observationally, we have seen only that life comes from pre-existing life. Even in Darwin's own work, it is plain that he conceived of evolution as taking over once there was a creature in place that had reproductive capabilities. Darwinism itself simply doesn't make sense unless there exists some common ancestor with the requisite encyclopedic genetics necessary to reproduce itself.

Another assumption of modern evolutionary theory is that mutations are sufficient to create biological innovations on their own. It should be understood that a mutation is actually a random mistake in genetic duplication. These mistakes are often then passed on through successive generations of genetic duplication. This causes a kind of corruption of genetic information, usually resulting in too much information here or too little information there. As a result, mutations are almost wholly destructive to living things, or at least cause a less than optimal functionality. For example, genetic disorders such as down's syndrome or sickle cell anemia cause those who have these disorders to live more difficult and often shorter lives. This process of mutative change over time is the only meaningful mechanism for evolutionary development, and yet it seems almost totally destructive.

Another question persists: How many constructive and coordinated mutative genetic steps must there be to cause the transition of a dolphin-like mammal to a land-going mammal, for example? Would it have to be on the order of millions? Does this not strain the limits of credibility?

On the question of mutations, the case of fruit flies is instructive. The life cycle of fruit flies is very short, which allows scientists to tinker with their genetics through cross-breeding, in the hope of demonstrating how mutations can be a source of biological innovation. The equivalent of many human generations of genetic drift can be traced because of the short life cycle of fruit flies. And what has been the result of this study? Scientists have found that strangely there seems to be a kind of genetic barrier surrounding the species "fruit fly." Many exotic forms of fruit flies are produced in these studies, but what is curiously missing is any leap to new biological structures belonging to other species of flies. The point is that there is only so much information available in the gene pool of the fruit fly. One cannot expect that a random reconfiguration of the raw parts of DNA will produce additional information. That would be something like taking aluminum pipes, exploding them, and hoping that the explosion will produce an aluminum can.

The last glaring assumption of evolutionary science is the notion of naturalism itself. I have also discussed this elsewhere, but it bears repeating that there is no way to scientifically demonstrate the God does not exist. It is philosophical position. To say that "everything has a naturalistic explanation" is self-contradictory, for surely the statement that "everything has a naturalistic explanation" does not itself have a naturalistic explanation. It is philosophical, which means it is an interpretation of the facts and not a fact itself. But those principles by which we interpret facts are not facts themselves and are not even discerned from the facts. The problem of course is that the assumption of God's non-existence is passed off as though it is fact, which is absurd.

The Factual Problems with Naturalism:

4. Mutations: Observationally they are bad or neutral, not beneficiary in any appreciable way.

5. Fossil Record: There are significant glaring gaps in the fossil record. And not only that, but abundant and multiple complex life forms all appear together in what is known as the Cambrian rock layer. It is sometimes known as the Cambrian explosion. There are no common ancestors in the fossil record for most of the animals that come into existence in the Cambrian explosion, which seems to indicate that multiple creatures of different genetic trajectories came into existence simultaneously.

Darwin himself noted that if his theory were to be vindicated, there would have to be multiple transitional forms scattered throughout the fossil record. We should see literally millions of transitional forms between dolphin and land-going mammal, much less the rest of the fossil record. And that is not what we find. Scientists claim that the reason for this is that the conditions required for laying down fossils are exceedingly rare. But apparently the problem is significant enough to prompt a new theory championed by a Harvard biologist by the name of Stephen J. Gould. His theory suggests that the genetic changes that create new species happen much more abruptly than previously thought, so that perhaps setting down a fossil record would be compromised. Rapid coordinated changes happen and thus no record is left between species. This theory is called "punctuated equilibrium" to suggest that the evolutionary periods are rapid, followed by long periods of evolutionary calm.

The curious thing about this new theory is that it seems to suggest that evolution is happening so rapidly that one won't find a fossil record. Of course, the argument has been that evolution is happening so slowly that we can't see it now either. So what that means is that it is invisible both to our observations now and in the fossil record historically, but we must trust that it is happening--after all, how else are we going to explain the facts of our experience? Another simple answer might be that it isn't happening, at least not in the Darwinian sense.

6. Irreducible Complexity: Michael Behe, in his book, Dawrin's Black Box, discusses this idea. He illustrates by discussing the various parts of a mousetrap. To be functional, a mousetrap requires that all five parts function symbiotically. Another way of saying this is that each of the parts of the mousetrap were created anticipating the necessary relationships between the various parts. The whole is the reason for the parts, so to speak. But surely if we find things like this in nature, then we will be led to conclude that certain structures in nature cannot go through an unguided developmental process and that perhaps they were intentionally arranged in the ways that they are. A mousetrap missing even one of the essential five parts is wholly non-functional. It is questionable whether it can even be referred to as a mousetrap. Is this also true of the bacterial flagellum or the eye or other irreducibly complex structures in nature? Behe says yes, and many scientists agree with him.

7. Time and Probabilities: Reminder of Dr. Stenger's low probability argument. Remember Dr. Stenger offered a "low-probability argument," essentially stating that low probability events happen all the time (people win the lottery, people are hit by lightening, etc.), so one should not rule out that naturalistic evolution has occurred since we see low probability events every day.

I suggested to you that this is a dreadful argument, for the following reasons:

One, it is a logical fallacy (called Affirming the Consequent).

If evolution occurred, the improbable is possible.
The improbable is possible.
Therefore, evolution occurred.

But clearly it is ridiculous to make the leap from some improbable events to all improbable events, or from one class of improbable events to the class of improbable events to which evolution belongs. To illustrate,

If dogs are typing Shakespeare on the moon right now, then the improbable is possible.
The improbable is possible.
Therefore, dogs are on the moon right now typing Shakespeare.

The other response to Stenger would be that of Aristotle. Aristotle notes that chance events do occur, but within ordered boundaries. If that is true, then chance occurrences do not in the least threaten the Christian position. We can simply state that God's ordered design includes parameters wide enough to allow for chance events. The lottery is instructive here. From the perspective of the designer of the game, it is assured that someone will win it. From the perspective of the players, the winner is wholly random. No thinking person would conclude that because a chance event took place within the game that the game itself is a chance event.

8. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: Christians are fond of citing the second law against evolution, but to do so requires that we accurately address the arguments of our opponents. Scientists note that the second law does not preclude evolution on this planet because the second law only dictates that entropy will occur in a closed system. The earth is not a closed system. It is constantly irradiated by a primary energy source, our sun. The sun is the engine that drives evolution.

But is this response adequate? If entropy occurs in a closed system, we must ask if the universe is a closed system? It seems that most would either say yes, or would be led to conclude that we can make no other assumption given the evidence. As such, it seems clear that the second law is a serious obstacle to evolution on a universal scale. One could perhaps state that what we experience is global evolution amid universal devolution. The solar system is in decay. One day, perhaps many millions of years hence, it will unravel, the sun will explode or burn out its fuel, and nothing but diminished (less useful) matter will exist.

Another interesting thought is this: If the universe is devolving from some organized original state prior to the big bang, wouldn't that state be the most "evolved" state? Can we meaningfully think of the present state as more evolved than the big bang itself? Why arbitrarily conclude that organic matter is more evolved than supremely organized inorganic matter? What gives us that right--that is, what gives us the epistemological right to assess matter along a scale? No river can rise higher than it's source, and so the state just before the big bang is the most evolved state--that is, if evolutionary theory is to be consistent.

9. Law of Biogenesis: All our observations of nature indicate that creatures contain set parameters of genetic information that they invariably pass down to successive generations. And while mutations occur, they only manipulate this information and do not generate new and more complex information from it. That is where centuries of scientific observations have led us.

10. Big Bang Cosmology: The residual echo of the big bang is evidence of an absolute beginning, get this, not merely of motion in the universe, but of matter, time and space itself. Now that we know the atomic structure of matter, it seems impossible to conceive of matter locked in complete inactivity. And if the matter of the big bang was excited into motion, how was it so excited? Could it have provided for its own atomic motion by itself if it was frozen motionless at the beginning?

But matter in motion cries out for a creator or an absolute beginning to motion because of the Kalam argument. If there was no beginning to this motion, then the past is an infinite series of movements, or events. But this is rationally absurd because if the past is infinite, then the present could not have arrived.

Lecture Series: Lecture 15: Philosophy and Science

2011-01-11T21:53:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the first thing to say about the relationship of Christianity and science is that events do not interpret themselves. Science is not a value neutral enterprise. Some worldview is logically anterior to the events in question and serves as the interpretive paradigm by which the events are understood, their insights appropriated and applied.

This is why any understanding of science must first answer fundamental questions, perhaps best understood as the "philosophy of science."

This is where we begin. We must first develop a reasonable philosophy of science before we can rightly interpret the insights afforded to us by science. We will organize this by discussing certain fundamental questions in the philosophy of science.

Question 1: Is all knowledge discerned through the five senses? Is strict empiricism possible?

Answer: No! If there is anything that the history of philosophy has demonstrated, it is that there must be some content to our understanding that comes to us a priori (prior to sense experiences). This knowledge is necessary in order for us to make sense of the experiences we have. Some philosophers refer to this content of knowledge as features our our "noetic structure" (mind structure). Others talk about them as "properly basic beliefs." The point is that some ideas are innate, hard-wired into us by virtue of the way the mind is built to function. An example of this kind of knowledge would be mathematical and logical principles. Kant included time/space relations and causation in this content of a priori truths we simply know about. Others include moral law. And still others would suggest that knowledge of God is also a feature of our a priori knowledge.

But why is it the case that it is impossible for all our knowledge to come from our sense experiences? Well, think about it. What is the problem with the statement, "all our knowledge comes from sense experiences?" Clearly the statement, "all our knowledge comes from sense experiences" did not itself come from sense experiences. One could experience everything in the universe and it still would not bring down the philosophical conclusion that "all knowledge is restricted to the domain of the five senses." Such an idea is not physically discerned. Clearly not all ideas are derived from experiences. Ideas are used to interpret experiences in many cases.

Another point here: Can you even imagine shutting off all your senses? What would that mean for you? Could you really have knowledge? Now consider the opposite question: What would it mean if you had a constant stream of sense experiences, but no "operating system" to process the experiences? Surely knowledge would be impossible in either case. But of course this entails that there are some things we know about a priori. And surely this is one of the conclusions of philosophical history--namely, that it is impossible to imagine human knowledge without a harmonious relationship between the knowledge we learn from experience and the knowledge we possess prior to experience.

Question 2: Is science a value neutral exercise? (an exercise totally unclouded by bias)

Answer: No! This point will relate somewhat to the previous point. The fact is that science and scientists presuppose things about the nature of reality. And these presuppositions color everything about the conclusions they draw from the science lab.

Here is a short list of principles scientists take for granted as true, but without any scientific proof of their existence:

1. The universe is intelligible.

2. The rational structure of the mind relates to a rational structure in the world. (In short, I'm not just perceiving things; I'm actually figuring out how the universe really works)

3. The principle of causation. (We can thank David Hume for moving this one out of the realm of observational truth and into the realm of presupposition.)

4. Knowledge is possible.

5. The inductive principle holds because of the uniformity of nature (the idea that the future will be like the past... i.e. fire will burn in the future because it has in the past).

Every one of these principles has in common the fact that they are not learned by experiences of the world. They are assumptions about the world imposed upon our experiences and employed in order to give meaning to our experiences. I'd like to know how the scientist is going to go about demonstrating in a laboratory or field research that the universe is intelligible without first assuming that the universe is intelligible in order to demonstrate that the universe is intelligible.

Here is the simple point: Every scientist is a philosopher and every philosopher is a scientist. The two are inextricably linked. The key is to be precise about what knowledge comes from our observations of the universe and what knowledge comes from other sources. It is totally irresponsible and unfair for any scientist to suggest that philosophers have nothing to say; and it is equally irresponsible for any philosopher to suggest that scientists have nothing to say.

Question 3: Since all science proceeds on the assumption of causation, is there good reason to trust this assumption?

What if the world is just a random collection of events and the order we perceive is merely a human phenomenon? In other words, perhaps the idea that the world is knit together by a series of causal connections is only an idea subjectively maintained in the mind of man. Can we prove causation?

According to the Scottish philosopher David Hume, causation cannot be proved. He argues that our perceptions of the world are divided into impressions and ideas. Impressions are the lively encounters we have with the world (things imprinted on the mind via our senses). Ideas are what the mind does to interpret and string these experiences together. An example here: We have impressions of horses, and then we have impressions of horns. We put the two together to form the idea of Unicorns. But of course we have no simple impression of Unicorns; Unicorn is a mere idea we formed from sense impressions.

Now let's go a bit deeper: We experience events that follow one another in the world. For example, we hear a rooster crow and then the sun comes up. We hit a billiard ball into another and then the second ball moves. Here is our dilemma: How can we know that there is any causal relationship between the events we perceive in sequence? We have simple impressions of the events, but not the principle of cause and effect. All we have experienced is one event following another. For all we know, there is no causal connection between events. Perhaps what is happening is that we are imposing the idea of causation on events that are not really related. Every time I hit a billiard ball it causes the movement of the other, but is it at least possible that tomorrow I will hit a billiard ball and the second ball will remain motionless when struck by the first? All I know for sure is that every time I've experienced the first ball hitting the second, it moved, but does that prove there is a magical principle called causation holding the universe together? What if causation is not "in the world," so to speak; what if it is only in me? In other words, it is at least possible that the universe is a wholly random collection of events, and that the belief that events are ordered causally is something I am "doing to it."

Hume acknowledges that we live as if there is such a thing as causation, and it has "worked" for us to this point. But his point is that it cannot be proven, in which case a person could theoretically live as if it isn't real.

The implications of this are startling! Essentially, Hume suggests that the very foundational principle of science is subject to a serious and debilitating skepticism. The question must be asked, "why do science if we can't know for sure that we are discovering the nature of the world?" Surely all of science proceeds on the opposite assumption--namely, that the reason we study things like the human body is so that we can figure out how it actually works, and not merely to delve more deeply into our perceptions about how it works.

Now if Hume's conclusion is that causation itself is to fit in the category of a priori truths, or properly basic truths, then he is merely acknowledging that some truths are known without reference to experience and they are confirmed by their pervasive use and capacity to guide experience. Obviously we don't say that we learned about logic through experience, but surely logic guides us in interpreting experience. Perhaps causation is something like logic in this regard. It is not perceived by the senses, but it informs and governs what the senses "bring in."

What else can be said by way of response to Hume? If he is saying that we cannot know causal connections between events and thus cannot know reality--that we are little more than human "perceivers," then his view seems self-refuting. In essence, he would be saying that we cannot know anything for sure. But of course, to say that we cannot know anything for sure is to state something he thinks he knows.

And finally, one can ask, as have Geisler and Bocchino, "Did Hume assume causation in order to follow a path of cause and effect reasoning to arrive at his conclusion?" Did his thinking have a causal relationship to his doubt? If it did, then even the act of his thinking about causation affirms causation--that is, to question causation he has had to employ it, which is self-refuting as well.

Question 4: Where would philosophical skepticism lead us?

If Hume is right and we are only human "perceivers" who cannot know for certain that our ideas have any relationship to the "real world," then perhaps we should all become skeptics. The skeptic claims that we cannot have certainty about our perceptions of the world. But if our perceptions are the "stuff" of our ideas, then surely we can doubt our ideas also. In the end, we have cause to doubt, well, everything.

Now aside from the fact that even this is self-refuting (after all, if we can doubt all ideas in the mind, then surely we can also doubt the idea that all ideas are doubtful), let us consider what the idea would lead to if it could be true.

If we can doubt all ideas, then relativism must emerge. And the reason is simple: no reliable ideas means that all ideas are equally unreliable. All ideas have the same value, or lack thereof.

If all ideas have the same quality of unreliability, then none of them really matter. No idea can be truer or better than any other, which in the end must mean that all ideas are worthless--a mere chatter of pointless perspectives. Thus nihilism emerges, which is the philosophical position that the world is meaningless and nothing matters in the end.

If nothing really matters, then how is one to cope with such an idea? The answer is hedonism. The only real coping mechanism as a mere sensing being is to minimize the pain introduced to those senses and to maximize the pleasure that any stimulation of them might provide.

Thus, if a person is a hedonist, it could be because he is a skeptic. Perhaps he believes that we cannot know about God and morality and human dignity and the afterlife. Curiously many who believe such things default to a lifestyle of temporal hedonism.

5. Does the indeterminacy principle in physics indicate that we cannot trust the principle of causation?

Some scientists have noted that the indeterminacy principle in physics suggests that we cannot know whether causation operates at the most foundational level in the physical world--that is, at the atomic level. Upon the disintegration of the atomic nucleus, particles are generated and emitted that did not exist before this event. It seems that they just pop into existence without any direct cause. Thus, some have suggested that causation is dethroned by such phenomena.

But the curious thing is that causation was a precondition for discovering the indeterminacy principle. Scientists were asking, from whence comes these particles? And they discovered that the cause is unknown. Many Christians scientists and philosophers ask simply, "why believe that the particles generated in radioactive decay come from nothing?" "Why not believe that they simply have an unknown cause?"

The implications of the belief that there is no such thing as operational causation at the foundational level of existence are staggering. If causation does not exist at that level, then perhaps it does not exist at any level, in which case all science would conceivably be rendered meaningless again.

And consider the implications in ethics. What if my decisions in ethics do not flow from any causal factors, but are spontaneously generated and thus wholly unpredictable? I can just see new defenses for criminal behavior sounding something like this: "Your honor, I am not guilty because causation does not reign in nature, and thus I am not the cause of my behavior. My behavior happens to me and not the other way around, your honor!"

In conclusion, it must be clear that science is not a worldview-neutral exercise. Science itself requires a worldview robust enough to support its search for truth. Obviously it undermines the search for truth to suggest either that there is no truth to be found or if there is we will never know it.

Lecture Series: Lecture 12: The Problem of Evil

2011-01-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

If God is good, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? The logic of the problem works something like this:

If God is good, then he would intervene to stop gratuitous suffering (after all, we would).
God does not act to stop gratuitous suffering.
Therefore, God is not good (or does not exist).

Hence, the problem of evil. It should be understood that the real sting of the problem, in my estimation, is in the matter of the origin of evil and the analogy to human decisions when faced with evil.

How did evil come into existence if God created the world perfect in its original design? Assuming there can be no evil in God, then evil has no meaningful source. On the origin question we face two issues: one is a matter of definition and the other a matter of causation.

The first issue to consider is the definition of evil. As Augustine noted, God is the creator of all things--that is, things that have "being" or "substance." But evil is not a "thing in itself." It does not possess substance as good possesses substance. Evil cannot stand on its own, so to speak. For example, a flower is good, and it is good in itself. What we might term a "bad" flower is one that has lost its original glory or design somehow, perhaps a diseased flower. Thus Augustine's definition of evil is a "privation of the good." Just as cold is a privation, or loss, of heat, so evil is a loss of original goodness, purpose and proper relatedness to other goods. This must be understood on a grand scale. Imagine for a moment a symphony with its numerous parts played together in harmonious intricacy. Are there any bad notes in a symphony? Of course not, but there may be a player who decides he does not like the conductor's notes and will not bother about them. He decides to remove his notes from the whole sound, or worse still, decides to add his own blaring contribution at whatever juncture he feels is most artful. He in fact will destroy the whole symphony. He will break harmony. The total glory of the symphony has been diminished because he used his goodness in a manner for which it was not designed.

Another way of looking at evil is a misuse of the good. Evil comes into existence in our lives when we choose to elevate our derived goodness to the position of an original good. When we therefore act on the assumption that we can independently determine the use of our goodness, we become evil. This is why so many Christian writers have spoken of evil as a "parasite" or a "corruption of the good," etc. There can be no pure evil. Even Lucifer was originally good and chose to use the goodness God established in Him to assert his own glory rather than that of His creator.

Christians will occasionally speak of evil as the "opposite of good," or as "necessary to know the good." The idea is something like Hegel's thesis, antithesis, synthesis model. Without good there would be no evil and without evil there would be no good. These are pantheistic notions and not Christian ones. Adam and Eve knew that their experience in the garden before the fall was good. They may not have named the experience "good," in the way we now understand a contrast between good and evil, but that does not mean their experience was any less good ontologically. They were experiencing good before the fall. As such, evil is not an equal opposite counterpart to good. If evil and good are simply equal opposites, then a serious logical problem emerges. If there is not something higher up and further back than what we call evil and good; if in fact they alone exist as merely contrasting forces, or equal powers, then why call one good and the other evil? Why not just refer to them as opposing powers rather than protagonist and antagonist? There can be no value judgment claiming that one set of behaviors or inclinations is evil and another set is good when there is nothing outside of the two forces to determine which is good and which is evil. Lewis makes this very point in Mere Christianity. If there are only two equal powers behind everything in the universe, and they both believe they are good, then something must arbitrate between them to determine which of the two powers conforms to the moral ideal, etc.

Now when speaking about redemption and the good of redemption, it does appear to be the case that such a good is dependent for its existence on the nature of evil. Without human sinfulness, God's great glory in redemption could not be displayed. Thus the argument is that good in this case is dependent on evil for its existence. Christians will sometimes speak of the "best of all possible worlds" argument, in which the world is fallen, evil, but God uses this evil to bring about a greater good. It is important to note, however, that Christians do not argue that good and evil have no relationship; we argue that they do not posses an interdependent eternal relationship, and thus evil is not "original." Certainly God's active work of redemption is related to the problem of human sin, and, in theory, if there had been no human sin, the act of redemption would be an unknown good. That does not make a theoretically unfallen world any less good; it only means that the fallen world, in which God's glory is active in redemption and perfect justice, provides the glorious demonstration of God's goodness to which we are exposed, because it requires transforming evil back to good again. Another way of looking at this is to say that perhaps redemption is dependent on sin, but sin is dependent on God's originally established goodness. One cannot go backwards in infinite regress here. God's original good design stands as a singularity at the beginning. Sin takes from this good and corrupts it.

On the matter of causation, perhaps Aristotle would be of some help. Aristotle noted that not all causes are equal. He denotes four different kinds of causation, but two in particular are of interest--material causes and efficient causes. If it is true that God created the world from Himself, then surely it can be no other than good, since He is good. But what if God could create other efficient causal agents--that is, other beings that can cause things, at least within the limitations of their capacity for causation? Then God could set a creation into motion that was indeed complex, involving his primary causation, but then admitting the possibility of a billion subsequent causal contributions.

Such is the case with the origin of evil. God provides the material cause of all things, including free will. God is the cause of the causes of evil. One could say that Boeing is the material cause of the 9/11 tragedy, but of course no one is going to blame Boeing for that event. The reason is that the efficient cause is the blameworthy cause, because in an efficient cause there is an active will interacting with both subjects and objects and influencing them causally.

Of course this does not quite get us out of the difficulty here. The difference between God and my Boeing illustration is that God knew perfectly what would happen when he created beings with wills. He knew they would misuse them, bringing ruin upon themselves, and yet he chose to go through with it.

This raises the final and perhaps most disturbing aspect of this problem. God knew that people would misuse the gift of freedom, damning themselves to an eternity in Hell. And he has been active in history to stop evil at certain points. Thus one must conclude that evil is "in" God's design. Perhaps we can logically say that God is not the causal agent, but He certainly could have scrapped the whole plan in the beginning. This forms the core of one objection to this answer to the issue of evil--namely, that God should not have created at all.

The argument is something like this: A good God, with perfect prescience to all human choices, would not proceed with a creation that would involve the damnation of the majority of beings he created. Non-existence is better than existence with the probability of damnation.

Surely you can see the logical fallacy of such an emotionally appealing argument. To make such an argument one must compare two realities: non-existence and existence as we now know it. But of course, "non-existence" is not something with which anything can be compared. One can never have the experience of non-existence and then claim that it is better than existence. X cannot be compared to Y if X by definition does not exist.

The world certainly could have been made differently than it is. God could have made beings without free will, without the capacity of rebelling against The Good. But then doing so would, presumably, be to make a world that is less than perfect.

Very well then, free will, evil and the goodness of God are not incompatible realities.

Plantinga's Defense:

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga developed a powerful argument that many philosophers have referred to simply as "Plantinga's successful free will defense."

Here are the basic points:

1. Adam and Eve were given true "creaturely freedom," meaning they really could have done right by God or could have rebelled against God. We know how that turned out, but it was at least possible for them to live sinless lives.

2. God knew that Adam and Even would sin. In fact, He knew that in "all possible worlds" they would misuse the true creaturely freedom He gifted to them.

3. This means that some worlds are impossible for God to "actualize." In the same vein, God cannot create a world in which He is not creator. He can't make square circles or free creatures that are not free. He can't do the rationally absurd, because He is the source of rationality Himself.

4. God cannot actualize a world of free creatures never misusing freedom without their help, so to speak. But God knows this help is not going to be forthcoming, and so His choices are reduced to two: don't create or create under these conditions. We have already logically eliminated the first option, so the second option is the only one left.

Now Plantinga's argument raises another disturbing question: If God can make beings that are free and never misuse their freedom in heaven, why could he not have done this initially? In heaven, we will surely be free creatures, and yet we will also never sin. If this is possible ultimately, why not originally?

One answer comes from Augustine's views on creation. He believed that creation was seeded with potentiality. In other words, it was good but not perfect, in the sense that its whole potential was not yet in full bloom. It was something like a perfectly planted garden that required creative tending to unlock its full synergy and beauty. Thus human beings had some options available to them. They could trust God and cooperate with Him in cultivating creation to actualize its potential, including their own potential. Or they could resist God and "deprive" creation of its optimal glory. They could so practice good that it would become impossible to do evil, as is surely the experience of the unfallen angels. Unfallen angels have become impervious to the "external" allure of sin.

But the other option for Adam and Eve is that they could fail to practice good, strive against design and potential, and even therefore corrupt the use of God's good creation. In short, Augustine uses two Latin phrases that capture his teaching on this point well. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, and had they cooperated with God in actualizing creation's potentiality, then non passe pecarre et mori would be the case. In other words, it would be impossible to sin and die, because, like the unfallen angels, they would have become so practiced in the good that they would be impervious to the allure of evil. But because they fell, it is now non passe non pecarre et mori (it is impossible not to sin and die).

All of this leads to the conditions now necessary to bring us to the point that we are free and yet choose only the good. Augustine also discusses this point. True freedom is the freedom to choose the good at every moment. We will do this in heaven, but how? Surely this is only possible through the glories and mysteries associated with the Redemption. In Christ, our capacity of will is amalgamated with His, infusing our creaturely freedom with divine royal freedom. As such, it is only through the redemption that we can be brought to the condition required to choose only the good.

Lecture Series: Lecture 11: The Reliability of Scripture

2011-01-11T21:47:00.000-08:00

Though I am somewhat obsessed with the presuppositional method of Christian Apologetics, I also recognize that it is not enough. It is not enough merely to demonstrate that other worldviews are rationally inconsistent while Christianity remains rationally consistent. I think perhaps this is the most glaring sin of omission among the presuppositionalists. It is possible that one can be coherent logically and yet wrong. G.K. Chesterton reminded me of this in his essay concerning the madman. The madman is the most perfectly logical man among us. He can offer air tight arguments as to why he must be Jesus Christ, for example. Any challenge you offer will be quickly met by a wholly reasonable explanation.

Similarly, good stories are tightly contained little worlds, sometimes encompassing an intricate architecture of thought in which every conceivable detail has been meaningfully knit together. One would be hard pressed to find some logical inconsistency in the worlds created by Tolkien, Tolstoy, Shakespeare or Dickens. But notice that the worlds they create don't exist! They are brilliant and meaningful fictions and nothing more.

Perhaps Christianity is nothing more than a brilliant and meaningful fiction. Even the staunchest defender of Christianity must acknowledge this possibility. Unless, that is, there is some good reason to believe that there is a confluence of Christianity's robust logical consistency with abundant evidence that recommends it over other worldviews.

In simple terms, Christian apologists have traditionally favored two approaches: One, the presuppositional method; and two, the evidentiary method. Today our focus will be upon the evidentiary method. In short, we will defend the premise that there is significant historical evidence to suggest that Christianity is true. This evidence is supremely visible in two areas of study: the claims of the Bible and the resurrection. (Note: the area of design is another, but we have already covered it)

We begin with evidence for the Bible. It might be best here simply to point you to the work of men like Bruce Metzger, Norm Geisler, Josh McDowell and others, but what follows is a brief summary of some of the central arguments you will find in the work of these men:

1. Defining Terms: The first step along our journey to see the merits of the Biblical text is to establish a few important terms.

A. Autograph - An autograph is an original document. Autographs of the apostle Paul do not exist today, and neither do Autographs of any other book in the Bible. This should not shock or surprise anyone, since these books are over 2000 years old. No book of that age exists in its original form anywhere in the world. What we possess of these ancient books is manuscripts.

B. Manuscript - An copy of an autograph.

C. Historicity - The degree to which various manuscripts can be said to recreate the Autograph. When we study the historicity of a text, we are examining the manuscript evidence in an attempt to reconstruct the original document. Some texts possess relatively better historicity than others because of the wealth of manuscript evidence for those texts.

D. Tests of Historicity - Criteria developed by manuscript historians and scientists to determine the reliability of an ancient document.

The first test is the number of available manuscripts. There should be at least 5 manuscripts available for comparative analysis. If, for example, 4 out of the 5 include a particular phrase, but the latest does not, then it is probably reasonable to conclude that the other 4 contain the original wording, and that the 5th has been changed for some reason. If one only possesses one copy of the document, then it becomes nearly impossible to test the document for accuracy of transmission.

The second test is the gap between the original and the copy. There should be no more than 1000 years separation between them. The greater the gap, the greater the possibility of corruption in transmission, even if there are many manuscripts, because how can one know whether the original is the source or a distant manipulated copy is the source?

The third test is the language groupings and geographical regions in which the manuscripts are found. If, for example, a particular document possesses early manuscript evidence in various geographic regions, then the process of comparative analysis is greatly enriched. Not only that, such a document would be clearly an important text to humanity, since it was not merely a "local narrative." Also, local narratives, if totally isolated from other people groups, can perhaps be nothing more than local myths or hero legends. A book that transcends geographic and language boundaries is less likely to be a local creation meaningful only to a particular tribe.

The first assertion of many Bible critics is that the Bible has been changed over time. Surely it was later theologians who manipulated the text to include things like miracles, the Trinity, etc. I think it can be stated that, when applying the criteria that scientists use to test any other ancient text, we can flatly deny this allegation. In fact, it can actually be proved to a high degree of certainty that the Bible has not in fact been changed over time.

The best procedure to adopt when proving this claim is to compare the Bible to other ancient texts. Here is a short list:

Tacitus - Only 20 ancient copies exist and all of them are separated from the original document by over 1000 years.

Homer - 643 copies (2nd to the Bible) and all are separated from the original by more than 1000 years.

Caesar - 10 copies, again all separated by more than 1000 years.

It is important to note that most historians don't question that what we have of Homer or Tacitus is a reasonable facsimile of what each man originally wrote. And yet each possesses credentials that are laughable when compared to the Bible. In fact, NT scholar Bruce Metzger once stated that the weight of Biblical manuscript evidence in comparison with other ancient texts is, "an embarrassment to the other ancient texts of the world's history."

So, what exactly are the Bible's credentials? Get ready for this:

Total Greek texts within 1000 year separation from the originals: 5686

Total texts (all language groups) within 1000 year separation from the originals: 24286

Let me briefly list some notable ancient manuscripts:

The Ryland Papyrus - Sections of John's gospel from chapter 18, dates to c.a.d. 125. This puts these 5 verses from John at roughly 30 years from its original. There is no other ancient manuscript in the world that is closer to its original than the Ryland Papyrus. And get this, if you knew Greek and could read it and then translate it to English, it would read exactly as your Bible does today!

The Codex Sinaiticus - In the 19th century, the most treasured Bible in the world was discovered by a man named Count Tischendorf. He made a journey to the monks of St. Catherine's monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula. There he discovered this immense treasure. It was a complete copy of the Greek New Testament dating to the time of Constantine.

The Codex Vaticanus - Another complete copy of the Greek New Testament dating to the time of Constantine, held in the Vatican library.

Again, the remarkable thing about this wealth of Biblical manuscripts is that it allows scholars to recreate the original text to a degree incomparable to any other ancient text. In fact, through text reconstruction, it is clear that the Bible has been preserved from the time of its originals with an astonishing degree of textual purity--a full 98%. In short, we can say with a 98% degree of assurance that the Bible we now read is exactly what the original authors wanted us to read. There is literally no other book in the world like that!

There is another problem. Even if we prove that the Bible is preserved with a 98% degree of textual purity, there is still the matter of author intent. Perhaps it was the author's intent to initially set forth mythology. Or perhaps the authors did not intentionally set forth myth, but what they believed was myth nonetheless.

To prove that the Bible has sound credentials as an ancient document does nothing to address this problem.

It must be acknowledged at the beginning of any attempt to answer this challenge that we are not going to be able to prove our position here. We can perhaps offer numerous evidences, but this will fail to close the circle of proof. Proof on this point would require being able to see the events themselves, but when discussing history one is deprived of that option--that's why it's history!

So here are the points of evidence that suggest the Bible is more than a "historically reliable myth" or a "well preserved myth:"

1. Luke and Acts - Liberal historians and conservative historians agree that Luke is a first rate historian. Your textbook for the class (Unshakable Foundations by Geisler) includes numerous events reported by Luke that have been confirmed in archaeology and extra-biblical sources. It is believed that he reports the events with a keen eye for historical accuracy. Liberal scholars of course reject his claims to miracles, but it does seem curious that they would respect his competency as a historian and then arbitrarily deny his claim that these miraculous events took place in time and shaped events.

2. The Embarrassment Factor - If the NT was the construct of the apostles, then one would expect certain events to be changed in it. For example, most of the disciples are depicted as ignorant and arrogant simpletons. They never seem to understand what is happening. If they were trying to establish their authority, one would expect them to change at least some of this in their favor.

Another peculiar fact concerns the women. Jesus is shown to be a friend of women, which is strange indeed for the 1st century and would undercut his credentials as Messiah. He would be seen as effeminate and weak in the first century world. Women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb and report the discovery to the disciples. This is scandalous since women could not even be witnesses in court in the first century world.

These are two examples of facts mentioned in the Scriptures that are curious if one is reading an attempt to deceive the world concerning Jesus, His disciples and the Christian faith in its infancy. If one were trying to concoct an impressive lie, there are certainly better ways of doing it.

3. Why Die for Publishing a Lie? Clearly the message of the early Christians was not well received. Each of the original disciples died a violent death, with the exception of John (who died of natural causes only after suffering torture under the Roman Emperor Domitian). And yet they believed it so strongly that they did not merely spread it by word of mouth; they set it forth in writing so that it might be preserved and transmitted the world over. But this is yet another way of providing the Romans and the Jews with ample evidence of their treason.

It should be noted that many people die preserving lies, but it is rare indeed for a person to die preserving a lie that he himself authored. One would at least expect one of the disciples, on threat of death or torture, to say that they were making the whole thing up. And if not them, then some contemporary could surely have exposed them.

4. Prophetic Internal Confirmation - This is a tricky area, but one that can yield some fruit. According to McDowell, there are 300 plus Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. Jesus fulfills all 300 of them. Matthew's gospel was written to suggest to the Jews that Jesus is the fulfillment of Israel's Messianic hopes. Both McDowell and Geisler offer some analysis of specific prophecies Jesus fulfills.

5. Extra-Biblical Confirmation - It is perhaps not well known that Jesus shows up in more than just the writings of Christians. He is reported, for example, by Josephus, the Roman Jewish Historian, as well as by Tacitus and Lucian. Josephus even indicates that Jesus was a well known "wonder worker," but then mentions that the Jews questioned the source of his miracles. Note that they did not question the miracles, but they did question how Jesus did them.

Lucian and Tacitus mostly recount details about the early Christians and their claims, but the fact is that both must address this new movement as one rooted in historical claims.

6. Habermas' Minimal Facts Argument - This is perhaps the strongest argument to suggest that the miracle claims of the Bible could be grounded in fact. Gary Habermas is a philosopher with Liberty University in Virginia. He has worked for years with the evidences for the resurrection event. Recently he published his work and in it he develops his now well known "minimal facts argument." He studied several hundred sources written between 1976 and 2004 on the topic of the resurrection. Those he studied represented the whole spectrum of theological enquiry on the question, including the liberal perspective.

Habermas' Thesis at the end of the study: Scholars are in general agreement concerning five key facts concerning the life, death and resurrection of Jesus:

A. Jesus died by crucifixion. Habermas discovered that no serious scholar rejects this idea. It is a confirmed fact of history that Jesus died at the hands of the Roman empire.

B. There was an empty tomb phenomenon in Jerusalem in the early years of the Christian movement. In fairness, Habermas estimates that it is about 75% of the scholars he studied who concur on this point. There were many who wanted to destroy Christianity in its infancy, and surely they could have done so by producing a body. How is it that Christianity grows to several thousand on the claims of a literal physical resurrection in the very city where this event took place if the tomb was occupied or the body had been produced? All the theories cited to explain this away are unsatisfactory. It is not reasonable to believe the disciples stole the body, claimed he had risen, and then were tortured and killed for this claim. It is also not reasonable to suggest that Jesus did not die, but was only seriously injured. It is also silly to believe that the disciples hallucinated, since group hallucinations might occur if all were affected by drugs, but would they all hallucinate the same thing? And then would they confidently proclaim it was real the morning after?

C. The Disciples Claimed They Saw Him - All scholars agree that the disciples were deeply affected by something after Jesus' death--something that convinced them to proclaim he was risen. It transformed them into fearless witnesses who stared death in the face with little concern.

D. The Radical Conversion of James - Scholars also agree that James, Jesus' half-brother, was radically transformed after the alleged event of Jesus resurrection. He was a skeptic during Jesus' life and then became leader of the Jerusalem Church after the resurrection, in the end dying for his claims regarding Jesus' resurrection.

E. The Radical Conversion of Paul - Scholars also agree that the Apostle Paul was radically changed after allegedly seeing the risen Jesus. There can be no more pronounced turnaround than the one we see in the life of Paul. He went from being one of the primary figures leading a crusade to annihilate the Christians to becoming their most vocal advocate.

Habermas' Conclusion: Habermas asks the simple question, "What is the best explanation for these five facts agreed upon by all reputable historians?" The best and cleanest explanation is the resurrection itself, as radical an explanation as it is.

Evolutionary Argument Against Homosexuality

2010-12-15T22:01:00.000-08:00

Let us scrap the whole idea of religious condemnation of the practice of homosexuality and try something else.

What if homosexuality is wrong on purely atheistic and evolutionary grounds? What would it have done to the human race if the first human beings were "naturally" homosexual?

Here are a couple of arguments:

Argument 1:

1. Natural human behavior involves the behavior necessary for the survival of the species.
2. Any behavior that would destroy the species is unnatural.
3. Homosexuality, if taken to be normative, would result in the sterilization of the species.
4. Homosexuality is unnatural.

Or ... Argument 2:

1. If nature has so composed humanity as to procreate heterosexually, then the only behavior that comports with nature's design plan is heterosexual behavior.

2. If heterosexual behavior is the only behavior that comports with nature's design plan, then homosexual behavior is an act of violence against nature's design plan.

3. If homosexuality is an act of violence against nature's design plan, then it is at the very least unwise.

4. Therefore, if nature has composed our humanity to procreate heterosexually, then it is at the very least unwise to practice homosexuality.

Perhaps the objection to this is that nature could have produced human beings capable of homosexual reproduction "if that were the will of evolution." But this is the trouble in evolutionary theory--namely, how to determine what is natural and what is unnatural. In one sense, evolution makes no preferences, and so everything is natural, including the pedophile's predilections. And so...

Argument 3:

1. Nature gives us no guidance as to what is "natural" and what is "unnatural."
2. We determine these labels through a dialectic process (discussion and group consensus).
3. But group consensus can often be wrong (i.e. racism, the flat earth, etc.).
4. Since nature makes no preferences, and since our conclusions are merely fallible human judgments, it is reasonable for us not to make preferences with respect to sexual behavior.
5. We should not prefer any form of sexuality over another, to include bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, polygamy and the whole colorful spectrum of sexual behaviors.
6. (Or... We should prefer whatever form of behavior we think natural and demonize the rest, since we cannot arrive at "truth" in these matters through dialectic, and since nature is giving us no guidance.)

Is it "right" that nature has produced human beings that reproduce in a rather limited way--that is, heterosexually? It is "right" in the sense that it is clearly the "will of evolution," and in that sense it could be argued that the will of evolution is heterosexuality, which brings us back to Argument 1.

Homosexual couples dedicated to having children must wholly rely on resources not available to them naturally. In that sense, no homosexual family can ever be purely homosexual. It must borrow from the opposite sex the necessary equipment for human reproduction. Even if it were to become possible to chemically transform sperm into eggs, it would necessarily recreate the conditions naturally required for reproduction, which are heterosexual conditions.

Another way to think of this is that in reproduction the genetic code of the parents is preserved in the child. The child is an expression of both of them. But this can never be the case with any gay couple. The child will never be an expression of merely their union. It will perhaps be an expression of one of them, and an unknown heterosexual partner. Should this be considered natural? Perhaps if we decide so, but what if we don't?

In conclusion then, we see two issues here: One, the epistemological issue that frees the evolutionist to define "natural" however he may choose; and two, the reasonable conclusion that, in evolutionary models, what is natural is what is necessary for survival.

Perhaps the best way to understand these two points is to join the evolutionist in his dilemma. If he cannot rely on philosophical speculation to answer what is natural and what is unnatural, then he must turn to nature itself for the answer. But, as we have seen, nature gives no guidance here except the behavior that tends to the survival of the species or undermines it. Thus, we cannot rely on human opinions of sexual behaviors to determine whether they are "right or wrong" or even "natural or unnatural."

So what is the solution, from a strictly evolutionary perspective? Perhaps it could be acknowledged that there can be no "right or wrong" with respect to human sexuality, or at least if there is we cannot know it. But this leads to all manner of complications, such as giving up the right to condemn pedophilia and a whole host of other "perverse" sexual behaviors.

Perhaps the evolutionist can claim that we can't know that is it wrong, but we must manage human sexuality nonetheless, and so we can't permit certain behaviors. Indeed this would solve some problems, but it does nothing to say that the child molester is wrong; it only says that we can't tolerate his "natural" and "normal" behavior. His kind of nature just doesn't work well with the group, but it surely cannot be morally wrong. You may note that an unintended consequence of this kind of thing will be mob rule. What if society came to believe that everyone belonged to everyone else sexually and that marriage was a kind of destructive and possessive egoism (something like Huxley's vision)? And what if that society decided that marriage was no longer legal? Is morality only a matter of consensus? If it is, one loses any right to claim that another persons behavior can ever be wrong.

And so the evolutionist is, in my estimation, paralyzed by his epistemology. He can only work with what is and not what ought to be. The moment he uses the word ought, he claims authority, but why should we listen to his authority and not those with whom he disagrees? But surely in turning to what is, he finds no solution to this simple question, "is homosexuality natural or unnatural?" For nature is what is and not what ought to be. It seems foolish, in the evolutionary sense, to claim that nature ought to be other than it is. Human beings ought to have three arms, ought to have telekinetic powers, ought to be able to reproduce homosexually, etc. Foolish! Nature has made us as we are, and there seems no point in arguing these things.

Is the homosexual then something like a cheetah born with only three legs? Or is he more like the cheetah born with wings--that is, something that looks unnatural, but is really the next step in evolution? Can one turn to human deliberations on these matters to solve such a question? Of course not, because of the epistemological problem already enunciated. The only way to adjudicate this matter is to turn again to what is and not what ought to be. Currently the reality is that human beings propagate heterosexually, and so nature is telling us that the homosexual is a cheetah with 3 legs (back to Arguments 1 - 3).

Or perhaps it would be best to offer a summary argument:

1. If homosexuality is natural in the evolutionary sense, then it's consistent practice must result in the preservation of homosexuals.

2. But it's consistent practice undermines the preservation of humanity.

3. Homosexuals are members of humanity.

4. Therefore, homosexuality is unnatural in the evolutionary sense. (in the same way dinosaurs were "unnatural" within the environment that produced their extinction, or in the same way a three legged cheetah is "unnatural.") And of course we all know it is a short journey to move from "unnatural" to "unacceptable." After all, it follows that if certain features are unacceptable to nature, why should they not be unacceptable to we who have been produced by nature?

Or if you like it in one sentence: Homosexuality runs counter to the manner in which natural selection has fashioned us to reproduce.

An Address to Parents

2010-12-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

I have something to say to parents of students involved in Christian schooling, and I'm afraid this must be frank.

I'm in my 14th year of teaching in Christian schools, which of course does not necessarily qualify me to say anything of importance on this subject, so I recommend that you judge what follows on its own merits rather than the merits of its author. Who I am does nothing to validate the truth of what I say; the truth of what I say validates me.

The way I want to approach this is to expose certain myths regarding Christian education in the hopes that these might finally be set aside as unworthy ideas.

Myth 1. Since parents pay a lot for Christian schooling, they should be able to expect deep personal interaction between their students and the teachers.

On what level is this going to be realistic unless we return to the old Oxford tutor model? And what are we going to pay tutors?

The fact is that even in private Christian schools we face the fiscal limitations inherent in any business. Non-profit businesses are still businesses, that either offer a sustainable product at a fair price or they don't. The decision to mass produce education rather than establish a tutor style system is directly related to economics. Christian schools follow the public school model (many students in a classroom setting) because it seems to distribute resources across a large population more efficiently than any other system yet conceived.

Thus it seems unrealistic to expect that a teacher is going to develop a close interaction with all 130 - 180 of his students, even if the parents are paying a lot of money. Perhaps if they paid 20k or more a year, then there would be the necessary resources to hire a bevy of tutors. Of course in our present situation a teacher needs to be available to students, but surely it is foolish to think that a teacher can provide a consistent level of personal assistance outside the classroom to all of his students, unless of course he wants to abandon all other interests in his life.

Myth 2. Students should expect to perform better in a Christian school than in a public school because they enjoy committed teachers.

Perhaps students should expect to perform worse in a Christian school because they are under the care of committed teachers, at least for a period of time.

What are parents paying for when they send a kid to a Christian school? For an ensured outcome? For a nicely decorated transcript? It seems to me that parents need to think about this question. There is a sender and a receiver in the educational exchange. And it is curious that parents who are not always successful producing the right responses in their children think it a defect in the teacher when he cannot always produce learning in the same child. So what realistically are parents paying for? The answer is simple; they are paying for a first quality sender, and nothing else! How it is received will be determined by innumerable variables outside the teacher's control.

3. The Christian school should carefully guard against students ever being made to feel dumb. Self-esteem is necessary to strong performance.

Bill Gates has confronted this attitude in our society. He sees it as a kind of cult of self-esteem. Instead of producing highly competent, thoughtful adults, we are producing bold, self-assured and impotent narcissists stunted indefinitely in the entitlements of adolescence.

Students today seem to expect incentives to performance. While Gates, and indeed many others, would claim that performance creates self-esteem, our culture seems driven by the notion that self-esteem is a prerequisite to performance. Kids must feel smart before they will become smart, etc. Kids must feel successful at sports before they will become successful at sports.

Now on this point there is some truth, especially from a Christian perspective. God first accepts us and then our actions are produced from confident assurance of our standing in His grace. A child takes its first halting steps away from mom and dad because he knows he is already loved.

But does that mean it is realistic to expect Microsoft to first make affirmations of love and provide personal assurances of fidelity to an employee before a contract is signed? If a child does not receive foundational self-esteem in the home, or more foundationally from God, then whose responsibility is it to provide that self-esteem to him or her? Perhaps the school exists to test and deepen self-esteem rather than to establish it foundationally.

One final anecdote on this and I end. Once I encountered a baseball coach who didn't like that I had failed two of his baseball players. He suggested, rather boldly, that coaches are better than teachers because they have to take the talent they are given and find a role for everyone on the team. They have to train players to make a contribution at whatever level each individual can. This he confidently claimed is not what teachers do in the classroom. If the teacher fails to reach a student, then he takes the easy way out and fails the student. In short, he was accusing me of failing my students, literally and figuratively, while he, of course, was not failing his players. I asked the man a question that effectively ended the conversation. I asked him simply, "Do you have tryouts and do you cut players as a result?"

Here is the question: In a Christian school, is it our job to tend to the fragile psychological lives of our students or to manage and enforce standards of learning? Perhaps we can have a minor role in the former, but surely our primary task relates to the latter.

4. The Bible class should focus on helping students cultivate their relationship with Jesus rather than academics.

It seems to me that some parents believe that Christian character qualifies one to receive an "A" in a theological or philosophical course of study. Some insist that Bible class is "spiritual" and thus should not be a graded subject at all. After all, their teens are active in Church life and missions, and surely piety is the deeper purpose of theological instruction. Why then does a student who is already pious require theological instruction?

Now clearly to turn Bible classes into "pious circles" or "spiritual support groups" or "non-academic Bible studies," etc. would require us to abandon any notion of the Bible class as a rigorous academic odyssey of learning. You can see why. How on earth are we going to assess the progress of a student or assign grades in such a class? Perhaps an "A" grade would involve a certain amount of prayer, fasting, missions effort and church attendance. If one missed a Sunday or two, then of course a "B" grade would follow (unless of course one had a note from a doctor). This becomes absurd quickly. Are we to grade motives as well?

I'm wondering if parents who favor this would also favor seminaries adopting such a procedure? And why can't the same logic extend to other subjects? After all, we want students to "love math and English," yes? Perhaps they would be persuaded to appreciate the subject more if all academic pressure was removed.
And now another angle at this myth. Why should we believe that academic rigor and devotional responsiveness are mutually exclusive phenomena?

One, knowledge is often necessarily anterior to appropriate emotion and action. At least this is what we hope from our physicians and doctors. Why then assume that Christians know all they need to know because they have kind hearts? A doctor can have a kind heart and still kill you if he doesn't know what he needs to know. A Christian can feel compassion for others and not possess the knowledge to help them. Christians can sequester themselves into loving gardened communes far from the evils of society and lose any ability to think well enough to understand or respond to the serious challenges of this world or contribute anything meaningful to it. No, sweet simple oblivious ignorance will not do! As Lewis put it, "Christianity requires a grown-ups head and a child's heart."

Two, those for whom devotional responsiveness comes most naturally vilify those for whom academic rigor comes most naturally and vice versa. And each group polarizes from the other. We end up with the heart people and the head people. We have whole denominations of heart and head people segregated from one another. But surely a Christian school is a place that heralds intellectual excellence in the Christian life! Surely if there is a perceived imbalance in a Christian school, it would be in the direction of head over heart. Does this mean that the school advocates a separation of head and heart? Of course not! In fact we teach as a matter of course that there can be no separation of head and heart in the Christian life, but notice that this is something we "teach" academically because that is the nature of the institution.

Christian Schools and Money

2010-11-28T22:41:00.000-08:00

Recently I got an invitation to give money to a Christian school. Of course this is not all that unusual, but in this case it is the very school in which I teach.

Catch the audacity of this: The school convinced one of our more influential teachers to write a letter offering an elegant defense of why each of us should give to the capital campaign. In no way do I fault the teacher. No doubt the administration felt such a letter would be better received from one of our own than from one of our superiors. I spent the first several minutes wondering whether they realize we can see through such manipulative tactics.

But that aside, let me address a few of my concerns with this letter, which confidently proclaims that "we have a vested interest in the well being of the school," and as such ought to give "above and beyond the demands of the job."

First, one must immediately wonder whether the school is so desperate that it has to ask its employees for help. Can you imagine any struggling business issuing such a letter to its employees? Who would be able to respect Starbucks as a business if it sent such a letter to its employees? Many Christian schools devolve into "ministries" because they are no longer solvent as businesses offering any valuable product. When a Christian school must entice customers through low prices, then either the product is substandard or the market can no longer justify it (meaning, there is a diminishing interest). Parents can find cheap education at the local public school.

Second, a letter like this sends the message that we are not really professionals receiving fair compensation for our unique talents and contributions. We are actually ministers, giving away our time to a charity. And clearly we are not giving enough.

Third, we clearly see that the administration or board of the school is not courageous enough to take the professional responsibility of telling us our salaries should be reduced to maintain fiscal solvency. In a down economy, when fewer and fewer people can afford luxuries like SUV's and private schools, we have merely chosen to plead with teachers to give up their salaries instead of imposing budget restraints or laying people off like Ford did.

Fourth, it seems clear that the sacrifices we are already making are not sufficient to somebody in the leadership of the school. We already earn salaries below the public school sector, endure the worst health care money can earn-you-the-right-not-to-afford and have seen no basic cost of living adjustment for two years.

We are meant to console ourselves with the thought that we will be paid in heaven; a lovely sentiment for a father of three young children.

Is America a Christian Nation?

2010-11-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

Why is it so difficult for American Christians to see that this is not a Christian nation?

Christians should treat America as the Christians of old treated pagan Rome. For what really is the difference?

We don't have infanticide, but we do have the sterilized, cosmopolitan version of it in abortion. And we have slaugtered many more babies than the Romans ever dared to kill.

We don't have slavery, but we do have massive debt, illegal immigration and cheap outsourced labor.

We don't have rapacious ambitions to conquer the world, but we wouldn't mind it if the worlds indirect subservience to us should remain exactly as it is.

We don't have the moral compromises of paganism with its sensuality and temple prostitution, but we do have Las Vegas and the Internet.

We don't have a silly system of multiple deities to whom we bend our uncritical allegiance, but we do have celebrities and politicians.

We don't have gladiators, but we do have our fascination with violent forms of entertainment.

It is time for Christians in America to live and articulate something better than America!

It is time to stop pandering to people who expect that the next argument, politician or law will restore Eden for us at last!

It is time for Christians to promote the stark and austere theology of Paul when he claimed that only in the cross of Jesus can man or society be healed. "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks."

It is time for the cross of Jesus to be a scandal in America and not a mere accessory.

Lecture Series: Lecture 9: Key Terms in Philosophy

2010-11-23T21:43:00.000-08:00

We reserve this lecture to discuss certain fundamental terms in philosophy, and perhaps to review some we have already discussed.

1. Epistemology: The study of sources of knowledge. The controlling question of epistemology is, "How do you know what you know?"

A philosopher friend of mine has a bumper sticker that asks, "Are you epistemologically self-aware?" While this is about as nerdy as it gets, the question is absolutely essential. And the answer of most people is a resounding No!

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that one's epistemology may be the single most important aspect of a philosophy of life.

Dr. Noebel in his fine work has cited six primary sources of knowledge. They are experience, reason, intuition, culture, witness and revelation.

It is worth asking yourself how you came to believe what you believe. To simplify all of this, consider why you are Christian (assuming you are)? How do you know Christianity is true? It seems to me this is so fundamental a question that it can be asked of nearly any religious, historical, political or social perspective. If someone says, for example, that I ought to "save the whales," then my question ought to be, "Who says?" "On whose authority?" "How do I know it is right to save the whales?" Asking this simple question reveals a person's epistemological sources and whether or not I should accept them.

When considering the three major worldviews, we see that each has different, even opposing, epistemologies.

In Pantheism (the belief that all things are god or are animated by god), it is clear that certain sources of knowledge cannot be trusted. The senses, for example, are notoriously deceptive, and so we must detach from our limited perceptions of the world. Human reason is likewise often deceptive and confining. The source of knowledge prized most by pantheists is direct mystical encounter (a form of subjective revelation... often referred to as intuition).

In Atheism (the belief that there is no God and no spiritual dimension), an opposite epistemology to pantheism emerges as prominent. Atheists are proud of being scientifically minded people, controlled by the precautions of reason, logic and evidence. Atheists would universally discount any divine revelation, either mystical or propositional (written in books). They would also highly doubt intuition as any relevant source of truth.

Christians, unlike both atheists and pantheists, want to recognize the contribution of each of the six sources listed above. There is a place in Christianity for the mystical and subjective, as well as for the rational and objective. The best Christians have maintained that there will be no conflict in Christianity between the discoveries of reason and science and the discoveries of the spiritual life. The two are distinguishable domains with their necessary tasks, but they are not opposed to one another. When there is conflict between them, it is usually because there has been an error with respect either to our observations or our passions. No Christian would suggest, however, that because it is difficult to align the spiritual and the physical, one or the other must not exist.

2. Cosmology: The study of the universe and its causal relations. The controlling question of epistemology is, "How is there something?" "How did everything begin?"

And again each worldview answers this question according to its first principles.

Atheists would say that the universe is self-generating. The big bang must have banged on its own, somehow. Most atheists today maintain that the universe was finite in the past but came into existence of its own accord. One physicist, named Victor Stenger, claims that the big bang must have been something like the particles generated in nuclear decay--that is, they seem to come out of nowhere.

Pantheists are not really interested in mechanistic explanations of the universe. They don't care about tracing causal connections between events back to a first cause. And the reason for this is that their philosophy precludes any meaning to the notion of a "beginning" to the existence of the world. If the world is indistinguishable from man and all other entities in creation, and all of it is God, then certainly it would be foolish to look for a beginning to "God." Everything simple is!

Christians believe there is rational order to the universe, and that everything is knit together by the principle of causality. As such, we can trace causation back to an absolute beginning to time. This of course is where the Cosmological argument takes over (see article on the various arguments for God's existence) and explains that it is reasonable to conclude that all of time and space began to exist as a result of God's creative act.

3. Ontology: The study of reality. We also referred to this as "Metaphysics." Both touch on a philosopher's understanding of reality. The controlling question here is, "What is real?"

Atheists would answer that matter alone is real. This is a position called "materialistic monism." Monism simply means "one substance." In this case, the only substance that exists is matter. Matter may be configured in various ways, but everything we find in the universe is reducible to various forms of the composite parts of the universe. And the only reason matter is constructed in the ways we now see it reduces to "luck." Even natural laws and their various values (such as the strength of gravity) are accidental and not essential features of nature. The only essential, apparently, is the "stuff" of the universe itself.

Pantheists assert precisely the opposite position to atheists on the question of ontology. Their position is often referred to as "spiritual monism." Here the only substance in the universe is spirit, or God. Any beliefs about particular expressions of matter are karmic illusions. Through various spiritual practices, one can be led to abandon one's belief in the dizzying multiplicity of perceived material things. One will be able to see that everything is already dissolved into an ocean of interrelated spiritual unity.

Christians maintain the age old philosophy of dualism, which means that there is a dynamic tension between the spiritual and the physical. Both exist and can be distinguished, but they cannot be wholly separated. The spiritual and the physical are intertwined. Plato also believed in this dualism, except without using explicitly Christian categories. He believed that there was a realm of perfect and changeless spiritual entities, known as the forms. And there was also the realm of the material world, which is a kind of shadow of the ideal world. Christians can certainly agree with Plato to some extent, but there also exists several serious points of disagreement. For example, Plato suggests that the reason we know about this realm of spirit is because our spirits were once happily enthroned in the realm of the forms, but they were unfortunately imprisoned within bodies and have since been yearning for escape back into the realm of the forms. Christianity on the other hand claims that God made us in His image, and has in various ways revealed His good character, causing us to yearn again for perfection.

4. Ethics: The study of human behavior. The controlling question is, "What ought mankind to do?" "How should we behave and how do you know?"

Ultimately both Pantheism and Atheism reduce to relativism, but the routes by which they travel to this end differ.

In atheism, one must ultimately assume that authority in ethics comes from our nature, which is the product of a mindless, purposeless process. And of course ethics appears to be a deliberate precondition for ordered and optimal human conduct. But it must be clear that any system of ethics based on the authority of an accidental phenomenon must itself be accidental. Thus human beings are perfectly within their naturual rights to reject the imperatives dictated by a random and unreliable process. This is a simple logical path really. If ethics is derived from our nature, which is itself derived from a wholly mindless process, then we can of course question and disobey it. But if we can question and disobey it, then it is not objective. Certainly there is nothing "outside" of nature to enforce it. If it is not objective, then it is subjective, or open to discussion and disagreement. If it is subjective, then it is by definition relative.

Pantheists arrive at relativism through a different route. Since their view of reality suggests that everything in the universe is an expression of the divine, then of course one has to wonder if war, serial killers and disease are also expressions of the divine. A strict pantheist would have to admit that they are necessary to understand the multifaceted beauty of the divine. How can one appreciate health unless there is disease, they might ask. Perhaps there would be no context for generosity if there was no such thing as greed. Evil and good are interdependent realities. Since this is true, then the only "evil" in the universe is one's insistance on calling anything evil. To do so is to hold the universe at arms length in an effort to define oneself over against the universe as superior to it in some way.

The way the Stoics put this was to imagine a mighty river. This river is good and its outcome is good, but people begin to believe there is evil in the river when they focus too much on particular points within the river. For example, a soldier who dies unjustly in battle may have a short and miserable life, but he has given his life for the greater good. If his focus, or the focus of his family, rests too much on his individual suffering and not on the good produced from it, then they will only bring greater suffering on themselves. Thus in the end there is no real "evil" in the river of nature or in the flow of nature. There is only the belief that there is real evil. If people can learn to see the "big picture," then they will come to accept their own suffering as necessary to bring about the good of the whole.

The problem here is that this process is wholly subjective. In the Bhagava Gita, there is a story of a young prince, named Arjuna, who must decide whether or not he will kill some rivals to his throne. Krishna, an Avatar of Brahman (the pantheistic notion of God in Hinduism), tells Arjuna that he shoud do what he will do, but to do so in a spirit of detachment. And if he can do that, he can "slay thousands and be no slayer--" meaning he can murder and not "feel" guilty because he is merely participating with the flow of nature, so to speak. Of course one is led to wonder whether Arjuna could have forgiven these rivals to the throne also in a spirit of detachment, so that even if they killed him he would be "murdered and yet be no victim." Thus, in Pantheism, ethics reduces to the subjectivity of one's "internal" state alone. One can presumably do the most heinous crimes but do so in a spirit of internal detachment. In the end, there is no right or wrong action; only right or wrong "intentions."

5. Theology: The study of the question of God. The controlling questions are two: "Is there a God." And "If there is a God, what is He/It like?"

The atheist of course believes there is no God or gods. This is a conviction for the atheist, even though fair atheists will affirm they cannot prove it. It is a belief, presumably drawn from the best evidence. Since there is no God, there is no ultimate being that will take care of everything in the end. We are on our own to make of the world whatever we will.

The pantheist claims that God is not an anthropomorphic projection of our psychological yearnings, but it rather the sum of everything in the universe. God and the universe are indistinguishable. Some would say that God is "in" everything in the universe, in much the same way we think our soul is "in" our bodies. This is sometimes referred to as the "Gaia" hypothesis, or "panentheism." If this is true, the the goal of life is not to "relate" to God as something external to oneself, but rather to come to recognize one's own innate divinity. Jesus, Buddha, even Muhammad, are all really just guides, who come to help us experience our own long denied divinity.

The Christians claims that there is an all-powerful, all-good, all-loving being behind the universe, or above it, or beyond it. God has created beings "like" himself, but they are distinguishable from Him. He is God and we are not! God, as a distinct being in the universe, can be misunderstood and slandered in various ways. He has set forth a clear statement of who He is and what He is up to through Holy Writ.

6. Anthropology: The study of man and his moral nature. The controlling questions here are also two: "What is man?" And, "What is his moral nature?"

Atheists believe that man is nothing more than a fortuitous biochemical accident. In the end, there can be no meaningful assertion of man's dignity apart from his particular collection of abilities--namely, he is smart enough to dominate the planet. But this does nothing to ensure that he is, was, or will ever be, the most important being that has existed in the universe. It is at least conceivable that another creature exists in the universe, whose intelligence is as far above our own as ours is above cattle. And it would therefore be equally plausible to suggest that such a being would have the same right to do with us what we do with cattle.

For the atheist, man's moral nature must be, on balance, an irrelevant question. Even if one could argue that evolution has hard wired us with a kind of moral law, why would anyone be compelled to obey it, since this "law" is itself the product of a wholly random process? Why not simply conclude that the sociopath (the man without a conscience) is at least possibly the most evolved being? What can "most evolved" even mean in a purposeless universe governed by chance?

The pantheist would suggest that man is divine. His problem is that he is not aware of his divinity, and thus he must go through a process of enlightenment, either through reincarnation or various spiritual practices now. The lovely sentiment of pantheism is that everyone is, or will be, "saved"--that is, all will be absorbed into the universal some day.

This means that man's moral nature can only be "good." In strict terms, pantheists don't like to speak of dichotomies like "good" and "evil." This is the language of Karma, they might suggest, since the use of such terms leads to an inability to see the necessary interdependence of "good" and "evil." Pantheism at base is amoral, because the universe is amoral. It just is! One thinks that cancer is evil or that a war is evil because one can only see how such things affect one's immediate physical existence. When we see beyond such things, we can come to transcend the labels "good" and "evil."

Back to our Stoic example of the rushing river. Remember it is a good river and its outcome is good, but there may be events that take place within the river that tempt us to use the term "evil." For example, a bear might drown in the river while attempting to hunt for fish, or a man might be crushed to death while attempting to navigate its rapids. But this is to isolate a single incident in the whole life of the river and claim that such an event somehow makes the whole less good. In the same way, we are tempted to claim that "evil" takes place in nature, but when we see these events from a larger perspective, we become aware of their necessity in producing the good. A fruit fly may live a short and miserable life, but it is needed by creatures above it in the food chain.

7. History: The study of events over time. The questions here are two: "Where is history going?" And, "Why do things happen as they do?"

For the atheist, history is moving towards eventual universal heat death, in the words of famed atheist Bertrand Russell. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the destiny of the universe in atheism is a particularized junkyard of dead matter floating about in a vacuous black sea. But of course, what is happening now is not all that much more dignified. We think it is, but perhaps we are merely deceiving ourselves. If the universe is meaningless, so is everything in it. To conclude this is not a division fallacy either, simply because in some cases what is true of the whole is necessarily true of the parts. If, objectively speaking, the universe has no value, then neither does anything in the universe, just as it is also true that the whole human race is mortal and that also means that every human being is mortal. It is also reasonable to suggest that if an entire garbage heap is worthy of being rejected by man, then so is every individual thing in it. But that is what Russell has done to the universe; he has turned it into a garbage heap of mind reeling proportions.

There is a fatalistic strand in atheism, and in every worldview really, depending on what one emphasizes. The fatalism in atheism sounds something like this: Perhaps we are nothing more than the products of chemical and environmental factors outside of our control, and that these factors were set up for us by chance. We are all playing a gigantic lottery game, and some of us have been lucky while others have been unlucky. It remains only for the lucky to assert their advantage and for the unlucky to hope for the "scraps of the table" of the fortunate.

It seems to me that even if an atheist could summon an argument for free will, such an argument would be swallowed up by the sheer futility of asserting one's will in a purposeless universe.

Pantheists maintain a cyclical view of the universe, unlike either atheists or Christians. It should be noted that the universe works in cycles only in our perceptions and not in reality. In reality, there must be only one unchanging, wholly stable reality--namely, God. What is constantly in violent flux is the individual's perceptions of this whole. And thus "he" is led through various experiences (reincarnation) so that he might ultimately give up any attachment to any one perception, or life, and then at last be set free to see the interconectedness of all things.

Pantheism as such is fatalistic--meaning, all things happen exactly as they must. Even the individual, apparently asserting his independence from the whole, is led by the whole to a place where he cannot deny his submersion into the whole. And he makes this discovery in exactly the way that "God" has planned it. There is no isolation or liberty from the "Godness in all."

Christians believe in the ultimate just outcome of the universe. God is sovereign over history, meaning He is not in any way surprised by anything that is happening in time. He is causally active at every moment of history, leading it to its ultimate outcome. History will be exactly what God predetermines it must be, and human freedom is limited by God's predetermined design. Christians deny that there is only one will in the universe and that God is the cause of evil. But all Christians also confess that God, in order to be God, must bring all things together in the end. There will be a perfect resolution to the chaos and injustice of the world as it presently stands.

8. Death: The study of life's end. The question is one: "What happens after we die?"

There are only three options in the various worldviews with respect to this question: annihilation, reincarnation and final judgment. It probably seems clear which of these fits with which worldview.

Atheists are annihilationists. All of humanity is an accident of evolution destined for annihilation. Matter is simply recycled.

Pantheists are reincarnationists. All people eventually come to see their lives in the light of the unchanging and eternal, and at this point there is merger with the eternal.

Christians believe in final judgment and resurrection. It must be clear that the Bible teaches that all human beings are immortal creatures, not just the ones that go to heaven. Believers are "resurrected" to newness of life in God's eternal kingdom. Unbelievers are "resuscitated" in order to face the "second death." In other words, they are not given "new life," but are rather restored to their old minds, spirits and bodies, and sustained in them forever and ever.

To get a sense for this, we should look at two cases of life after death in the Bible. The one case involves Lazarus, who was simply restored to his old body and spirit after he had died, and he was left in this world only to die again. In the other case, we must consider Jesus' resurrected body as an example of a glorified body, purged of all disease and suffering. Of course, in our case, this body will also be reunited with a spirit that is wholly cleansed of any defect as well, so that there will be a perfect harmony of body and spirit.

The Impact of Relativism on Politics and Art

2010-10-11T21:53:00.000-07:00

What is the result of relativism in politics? The result is defining one’s position by a constantly moving scale. For example, if the country is not ready for government run health care, then perhaps that is not the right thing to do. If the country is ready for gay marriage, then it is the right thing to do. Imagine how tiring it must be for politicians to have a finger constantly on the pulse of cultural opinion. No wonder polls have become so dominant in our day.

In our day, the politician adjusts himself to the conditions of the mob. The days of politicians fighting for certain immutable ideals have perished from this nation.

There was a day when people voted men of virtue into office, but in the relativistic age virtue is measured on a sliding scale. A man can be virtuous in the classical Christian or even Greek sense and not be elected, and the reason will be moral. He will be seen as self-righteous or judgmental.

Politicians must appeal to the "collective conscience." Of course the problem here, from an ethical perspective, is that if conscience is our only guide in ethics, then we give up the right to say others are wrong for choosing other than we would in given circumstances. Presumably their "conscience was their guide" as well. Some might feel that war is unacceptable and others that it is acceptable, and without any agreement on what constitutes acceptability other than the subjectivity of conscience.

And so morality is always changing, migrating. How does a migration in morality occur? It begins when individuals no longer heed the call of conscience on certain matters. Then they surround themselves with others who do the same.

How does one provide unity to a culture slouching towards cultural and moral particularization? The temptation is to hold it together with ever increasing laws, something like holding together a deteriorating airplane with duct tape. Does it not seem that America has a thousand righteous laws and fewer and fewer righteous men?

If we cannot come to believe that people will regulate themselves, then the only way a society can be shaped is by the external force of legislation and law enforcement. One can see therefore, that naturalism, and its necessary counterpart relativism, leads to arbitrary government activism. One cannot rely on making some kind of appeal to moral principle if moral principle is not something somehow separated from cultural opinion.

And what about the matter of relativism in art? There are no standards of beauty. There is not even a question of beauty. There is only immediate stimulation of the passions. Whatever can succeed in captivating the heart rather than the mind wins. Change is celebrated. Order and symmetry, or regularity, are boring. Boredom is the supreme vice, and it is not a vice in the individual but in his surroundings, or so it is believed. Change the surroundings with new art, and emotion floods back in and life is validated.

But in this world of endless change, it becomes difficult to call attention to one’s “unique artistic” vision. Does this impel our people to look to something that runs deeper that superficial expressions of emotion. No! Instead the volume is turned up on the perversions and visceral preoccupations of the mass. Shocking art is answered with still more shocking art until the only shocking thing is silence and boredom itself. But after years of conditioning by the endless parade of titillations, we no longer know what to do with the silence when it occurs. So we sit staring blankly, enervated by ennui in the silence rather than compelled to search for truth in it.

The other curious outcome of the shift towards relativism in our culture is that the artist and the politician have become our saviors. Religion, especially in the western tradition, is preoccupied with the audacity of understanding God and what He might be up to in the world. It is, according to the postmodern sentiment, insufferably preoccupied with “getting things right.” And the postmodernist knows that it is impossible to get anything right. And so the thinking priest is marginalized while the man of passion struts before us. One can fill a stadium with breathless anticipation of the outrageous and ultimately trivial peacockery of the rock star, and all the while some entertaining churches grow in numbers, but the people within them shrink.

This phenomenon of elevating passions over mind is perhaps most pronounced in the study of mathematics and science, both of which require all the traits our culture hates: patience, fastidious attention to detail, sequential linear thought, discipline, accuracy, order—all the dreadfully boring stuff.

And of course occasionally one encounters a math teacher or pastor who tries to “make it hip” to study math or theology. He laments how people make math or religion “boring” by talking about, well, math and religion.

Lecture Series: Lecture 8: Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

2010-10-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

Alvin Plantinga is an important Christian philosopher with the University of Notre Dame. We will soon consider his "free will defense" as a solution to the problem of evil. We also have noted his ontological argument for God's existence. Now we turn to his critique of naturalism, referred to simply as the EAAN argument--the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.

Since this is to be a brief summary, I'll start with the end of the argument and work backwards. If naturalism is true, then the human mind is a biochemical machine thrown together by chance, the product of random genetic drift over time. Such a mind cannot be relied upon to produce true beliefs about the world, including the belief that naturalism is true. Thus naturalism is an "undercutting defeater" of itself.

What does evolution ensure? Does it guarantee that we will develop true beliefs about the world, ourselves, God, etc.? No, evolution at best ensures only that we survive, but it is not obvious that survival is dependent on true beliefs. The philosopher Patricia Churchland puts it bluntly, "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing. The principal chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive… Truth, whatever it is, takes the hindmost (back seat).” The point here is that true beliefs are largely irrelevant to survival, or are at the very least totally superfluous to it.

Consider the two statements, "survival is the goal of all living creatures," and "survival is not the goal of all living creatures--understanding is." Why should we believe that our ancestors, who perhaps taught us that understanding is the goal of life, are not wholly in the wrong? Is there anything in evolutionary theory to suggest to us that either opinion recommends itself over the other?

The illustration Plantinga uses to back his thesis is simple and effective. It is probable that primitive cavemen ran away from Tigers. But why? Did they run away from them because their beliefs about Tigers were true beliefs? It is at least conceivable that the first human beings ran away from Tigers because they wanted to pet them and believed that running away was necessary to draw them nearer. They could have believed that the appearance of the Tiger indicated the beginning of a race. They could have believed the Tiger was a demon of hell and must be avoided at all costs. Perhaps the first caveman believed the Tiger was a regularly recurring illusion, and, wanting to keep his weight down, decided to run a mile every time the illusion appeared. Perhaps the first caveman confused running toward it with running away from it. His behavior was sufficient to ensure his survival even though his beliefs were wholly in the wrong.

Other examples of this phenomenon are myriad. For example, we know that our beliefs about the earth, the universe and our relationship to it are constantly updated by scientific discoveries. And the curious thing is that primitive man, with so little knowledge about the nature of the world, somehow survived. In what way did knowledge of the earth's spherical shape increase our ability to survive? In point of fact, the human belief that the earth was flat could have prevented a lot of deaths because it kept men safely ashore during a period when sea travel was quite dangerous.

Plantinga's argument briefly summarized then:

The probability of the accuracy of human reason is low or inscrutable (unknowable) given...

A. Chance production of the mind.

B. Evolution ensures survival but not true beliefs.

C. Conclusion: Therefore, since there is a low probability that human reason can be relied upon to produce true beliefs, and two of the conclusions of human reason are naturalism and evolution, then we can doubt both.

Another angle at Plantinga's argument is to consider the matter from the perspective of Hume and Darwin combined. As I have discussed in other blog entries, Hume asserts that causation itself could be manufactured by our intellect subjectively rather than existing as an objective feature of the world. In other words, it is very possible that the universe is a random collection of events and that we impose causal relations on events that merely succeed one another but do not determine each other in any measurable fashion. Then Darwin comes along and provides humanist's with a reason to believe that the world is, in reality, a random collection of events, and the mind is a product of nothing more than luck. But if the atheist is looking for some reason to believe that there is any pattern to how and why things happen in the world, surely he has not only given up any hope of finding it, but has answered his question by diffusing the value and import of all questions.

In the end, all Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian Evolution end up saying is that random changes in an environment meet random changes in organisms. When there is a lucky correspondence, the organism survives. But what could be more irrelevant to any life-form in those circumstances than true beliefs, including the belief that these conditions are lucky, or the belief that these conditions are ordained by intelligence? Darwin himself said it this way: “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind.”

Much Ado About Education

2010-09-28T21:30:00.001-07:00

It is interesting to note how much fevered talk there is about the matter of education in our day. If Oprah's talking about it, then it must raise our attention; or rather, because Oprah's talking about it, we can now pay attention to it. Let me sum up what I've heard from the cultural intelligentsia: We have bad teachers and not enough money. If we had better teachers and more money, or more money to give to good teachers, then our schools would improve. Much was made of various efforts to change the teacher tenure program and to reward good teachers while creating greater accountability, etc.

Is there something to this? Of course there is! Surely there are many bad teachers in the system, and surely one of the reasons is that we don't pay teachers what we ought to pay them. But I want to talk about four factors contributing to the failure of our educational system that are suspiciously absent from the present conflagration of cultural opinions.

First, there is the matter of the failure of parents and the disintegration of the home. As an educator, I recognize the need for foundational discipline and a basic respect for authority as necessary pre-requisites to effective student/teacher interactions. If a child has not been shaped by parents to afford the most basic tokens of respect to men and women in positions of leadership, then how can education proceed with any degree of success?

How many children of divorce are there in our nation? How many absentee parents? How many intact couples that simply fail to help their children manage their lives well? The effect of all of this is sometimes rather subtle. It produces a general coarsening of the attitutes of young people towards authority. And why would there be any other result? Young people have learned well that one cannot trust adults. If they cannot trust those adults whose natural affections and proximity should provide intimate motivation, then why should they trust total strangers? Why would they not view all adults with derision, or at least skepticism?

Of course if one believes that education is the responsibility of the state, then one can blame the state when a child passes through the halls of the schools of the state and remains ignorant.

If education is ultimately the responsibility of parents and their children, then individual families will need to look long and hard into the mirror if there is a failure to learn what must be learned.

The funny thing here is that many of the same voices that shift responsibility from the media to parents whenever a concern is raised about the influence of the media are the same voices blaming teachers and not parents for a failure in education. Someone must be blamed, and no politician, or aspiring mover of the masses, is going to blame the populace at large. It is one thing for an artist or cultural gadfly like John Stewart, whose demographic appeal is among 10-25 year olds (or those who are mentally that age), to rebuke parents. It is quite another thing for politicians and educators to do so. And so the easiest target here is clearly the state. After all, teachers aren't really human beings--they represent the machine of the state. And it is always en vogue to hate the state. Consider the many politicians whose rhetoric excoriates "Washington," as if the term denotes some abstract idea somehow separated from them.

Second, and related to the first, is the matter of the shift from an idea and word oriented culture to an image oriented entertainment culture. Neil Postman has said all that needs to be said on this point, and his work is perhaps the most devastating cultural critique you are likely to read. To put it simply, he provides clear evidence that we have departed from reasoned, linear, logical dialogue, and in its place we put the drug of various amusements. Words become accessories to images, and we lose our ability to think deeply at all. If Postman is right, the problem may be more complicated than hiring a more efficient teacher. In point of fact, even if we could hire Shakespeare to teach English in our schools, chances are most students would yawn at the man. (see related article: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/06/lecture-series-lecture-3challenges-to.html)

Third is the philosophical shift that has accompanied all of this. Two philosophies have successfully supplanted better philosophies, and we are now reaping the rewards. The first is naturalism and the second is postmodernism, and both are philosophically incompatible with education on deep analysis. Bright students know this, and so when their UC trained teachers sell it to them, they know that the implications include what philosophers call an "undercutting defeater" of education itself. Of course students don't use terms like this, but they know that if their teachers are right philosophically, then there can be no objective and abiding motivation in education, nor can there be any objective knowledge. There is only appeasement of the ruling class, which includes educators occasionally. So what does the postmodernist/naturalist tell students is the reason to be educated? To avoid punishment or secure reward, and there can be little other motivation in education. This of course may work when a nation is desperate for a greater share of material comforts, but what if a nation is already fat and happy and still indifferent to knowledge or to sustaining for the next generation what the fruits of education provided for their own generation?

One is going to need a worldview that supplies education with sufficient objective meaning, wholly apart from simple personal payoff. Suffusing education with enough meaning to make it a "good in itself" is not going to come from postmodernism or naturalism. In both worldviews, education is ultimately rendered meaningless, even though on the surface it provides a self-aggrandizing motivation. Beneath the surface, and on careful analysis of the claims of naturalists and postmodernists, one is left with a philosophy that strips our experiences of any significance at all, including the experience of self-aggrandizement (see my various articles on education).

Fourth, modern education makes a fatally flawed assumption. I call it the assumption of will neutrality. The premise of the general argument in our day is that if we will provide better education, then students will eagerly learn. This addresses the sender problem (at least partially), but does not address the receiver problem. Plato put it this way, "The little human animal will not at first have the right responses; it does not naturally love and hate those things which really are lovely and contemptible." (this is something of a paraphrase from memory)

While Plato believed man's natural proclivities included the vice of laziness, an internal impediment to growth in education, the Christian religion has always referred to this internal impediment as sin. Of course there are many in our day who base their entire philosophy of education on the opposite assumption--that we do not possess any relevant lack of virtue making education at the very least more difficult for us. For many in our day the only barrier is simple ignorance, and of course if the only barrier is ignorance, the only solution is information. Irradiate the universe with information and all in the garden will be lovely. Hide or obscure information and we will live in the Dark Ages again, or so goes the argument.

But if in fact we are not simply ignorant, but also somehow corrupt, then providing more information, or information artfully conveyed, or various forms of information, or even by providing an information age in which information is available to all of us 24 hours a day, will not bring about a renaissance in education. We know this is true because of what is happening in our day. The state of education is steadily declining in the one nation in the world where information is most available. Curious isn't it. Perhaps Plato and the Christians were on to something. The solution to the current education crisis is not simply, "add education," but also, "raise virtuous people who can receive and appropriate education." Of course one wonders whether or not the public school system can raise virtuous men and women, especially when it turns virtue itself into a matter of opinion.

Lecture Series: Lecture 7: The Moral Argument

2010-09-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

The person who best articulated the moral argument for the existence of God was C.S. Lewis. In his Mere Christianity, the first five chapters are dedicated to the idea that our moral conscience is evidence of an objective source of moral values outside of mankind. The best candidate for this is God, for various reasons we will discuss.

While Lewis is the most elegant on this issue, William Lane Craig provided perhaps the cleanest logical defense of the idea by use of a simple Modus Tollens syllogism:

Premise 1 - If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.

Premise 2 - But objective morality does exist.

Conclusion - Therefore, God exists.

It surely is curious that the average skeptic relies so heavily upon the "problem of evil" to assail the Christian argument when evil as a concept only has meaning if there exists some objective basis for determining what is evil and what is good. In a purely materialistic universe, what could it mean to complain about "evil?" Evil in such a world would be nothing more than our cultural labeling of certain actions we simply do not prefer. In other words, we could never call one animal group (say, Al Queda) any more or less moral than any other. They think we are "evil" and we think they are "evil." But there is nothing outside these two cultures that might provide some meaningful arbitration between the two opinions.

Thus, the syllogism is enriched by Dr. Craig as follows:

Premise 1 - If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.

Premise 2 - Some things are really evil.

Premise 3 - But that entails that objective morality exists (in order to determine what "evil" and "good" are).

Conclusion - Therefore God exists.

So, in the end, the existence of evil in the world is another proof of God's existence, for what can evil mean without God's existence.

And now a summation of Lewis' argument:

Lewis' basic argument is that we carry with us a shared internal law of right conduct. We feel this "law of human nature" constantly pressing on us, and it seems clear that none of us made it. It is something that is a feature of the world, or the natural structure of the world, that we merely discover and do not invent. Lewis feels that the best accounting for this is a supreme mind behind the universe who made us this way, to reflect His/Its own moral character. But none of us keep this moral law, and so we put ourselves at odds with the power behind the universe.

There are, of course, various challenges to this position, and Lewis answers each in turn.

Objection 1 - There are so many different moral systems, so there must not be an objective foundation to the moral law.

Lewis' response here is sufficient. He maintains that perhaps the idea that there is no objective morality does not follow from a mere observation of differences in moral systems. Perhaps the differences are minor in nature, at least in comparison to the striking similarities. Lewis asks us to consider the ancient moral systems of the Babylonians, Greeks, Persians and the like, and in really looking into them one is struck by how alike they are to each other rather than how dissimilar they are.

In essence, Lewis contends that all moral systems have crucial similarities. For example, one is hard pressed to think of a culture in which men are praised for running way in battle. Selfishness is never admired either. It is as if Lewis is suggesting that all cultures have the same moral infrastructure (foundation and pillars) and then they build around these structures to their own liking. For example, all cultures would claim that fidelity in marriage is a good thing, but some cultures allow for 1 wife, some 4 wives and others even more. Simply treating a woman however you want to treat her is not acceptable in any culture, etc.

An additional point can be raised to defend the biblical view here. Christianity acknowledges the reality of moral erosion over time. It begins with individuals ignoring conscience on certain matters. A classic example in the high school context would be cheating. There are many students who have decided to ignore their consciences on this question. If one does this long enough, conscience will become a blunted instrument. There will be an internal loss of moral sensitivity to cheating. It is also unlikely that such a person will surround himself with people who find cheating morally reprehensible and face their criticism. Instead, he will surround himself with other cheaters. If he does this, he will have lost any internal sensitivity to moral law on the question of cheating, but he will also have lost any external points of reference to the moral law, because he is now isolated from those people who might remind him of his moral responsibilities. I frankly think this process is a sufficient explanation for the divisions of culture and subculture in our world. Look at the gay subculture and you will see this same process. Look at "pot-heads" in high school and again you will see this process of ignoring conscience and then isolation with others who have done the same thing on the particular moral issue in question.

Objection 2 - Moral Law is merely put into us by parents and teachers.

Two responses here are sufficient. Lewis points out that it is silly to suggest that just because something is taught to us, it must be a human invention. We are taught math and logic this way, but no thinking human being would suggest that the core principles of these subjects were made up by men, as if they could be anything we want them to be .

But perhaps the most important response is that this idea is philosophically inane. It amounts to believing that there can be no moral progress and no moral exemplars. It forces one to accept the conclusion that what we believe about right conduct is a simple feature of our cultural environment. If what we believe to be moral comes directly from our culture, then if we were raised in Nazi Germany, we would default to the view that it is moral to hate Jews, etc. The death knell for this objection is that relativism in morality results in nothing more than the rule of the stronger. One loses any objective basis to complain about radical Islam, the Nazi's or any other hated moral position. The most one can ever say is that "we don't like it," which of course will be irrelevant if one lacks sufficient firepower to do something about it.

Objection 3 - Moral law is nothing more than a feature of our evolutionary development, an instinct making "herd survival" possible.

We hear a lot on this in our day, and the reason we do is that the secularists among us are trying desperately to find some objective basis for morality without God. Of course, nature is the only candidate, and so morality becomes some hidden feature of our genetics. Bats develop sonar and we have this super-instinct we call "morality."

A lot can be said in response to this. For his part, Lewis offers only one rather elegant argument. Essentially, he says that if in fact morality was an instinct, we would find that one of our instincts was always aligned with the moral law, but that is not what we experience. Instead, we experience the odd phenomenon of recognizing that sometimes our instincts are to be encouraged and sometimes suppressed. For example, our instinct for sex is sometimes to be encouraged and sometimes suppressed, depending on time and context.

If we saw a person drowning, we would face conflicting instincts; one for self-preservation and the other for "herd survival." What are we to do? Lewis thinks it too simplistic to suggest that we do what our instincts tell us to do because we are facing conflict between instincts. There is a third voice that comes in and tells us, in this case, to encourage the weaker of the two instincts and save the man. But of course the thing commanding instincts cannot be an instinct.

Secondly, we must ask why it is obvious that a "super-instinct" is sourced in genetics? It is clear that genetic information codes for the production of proteins, but is it clear that it codes for the production of beliefs? And even if it were clear, we would still encounter the problem generally faced by geneticists--namely, the source of genetic information in the first place. The only naturalistic solution is the chemicals themselves (amino acids and the like). It is maintained that they had to randomly arrange themselves into spectacularly encyclopedic configurations on their own. In short, chance is again trotted out as the explanation for all genetic information. But if that is the case, then the genetically coded beliefs we call "morals" are also artifacts of chance. What of course makes this whole idea credulous is the nature of the information systems we are talking about. Both genetics and morality are information rich systems that govern biological and social life. This information appears to be logically anterior (foundational) to biological and social systems working. For the Christian, information indicates intelligence, plain and simple. The nature of these systems requires a God who could compose nature with these information systems embedded.

Thirdly, and related to this second point, we must ask why it is imperative to obey an "instinct" that is the product of a random material process alone. Fine, my moral instinct is telling me to save some kids life, but why should I care to obey it? It is not as if it is "best" for my nature. How can I know what is best for my nature if my nature is produced by a mindless, purposeless process? We all know that the state can make as many laws as it wants to, but if it cannot enforce them, they are largely meaningless. In the same way, I can call any one of my instincts a law created by evolution, but evolution cannot enforce it, so there is no reason for me to listen to my instincts. Perhaps I choose to kill a man because he listens to bad rap music, in defiance of my "moral instinct." Even if I am caught by the authorities and sentenced to die, I can still maintain that it is my right as an evolved being to deny any of the supposed instincts to which I am allegedly bound, and to do so in experimental boldness.

Fourthly, and as a continuation of the previous point, perhaps in asserting my freedom to live counter to my moral inclinations, I am actually more evolved than someone else. Someone may claim that I have social responsibilities as an evolved animal, but why? If I choose to deny social responsibilities, perhaps that will be the key to the expression of my utmost individuality. Perhaps what is needed for total self actualization is the denial of others. Perhaps the sociopath is the most evolved human animal. Why should we conclude otherwise? If the atheist is going to condemn the sociopath, it seems to me he will have to do so on evolutionary grounds. He is going to have to say that "most" humans have this sense, just as most cheetahs have 4 legs for optimal speed, and so the "moral sense" is the "will of evolution." But evolution is arbitrary, causing unpredictable reconfigurations of genetics and various changes in the population. What if we came across a cheetah that couldn't run very well, but was clever enough to kill the other cheetahs while they slept? We might be tempted to say that the clever cheetah is broken because it wants to kill other cheetahs, but are we going too fast (pardon the cheetah pun)? If evolution really is a random process, then who are we to judge what it should produce? It seems to be rationally plausible that the pure isolationist sociopath could be the next step in evolution. And even if he isn't, the only way to condemn him, provided naturalism is true, is not to say that he is wrong, but that he is "unacceptable to the pack."

One final peculiarity about moral law: Lewis points out that it is strange that other laws of nature consist in simply observing how nature regularly behaves. But moral law is different. It is equally objective, but tells us not observational data about how things are, but rather provides ongoing critical interpretation of how things ought to be. This is Lewis' way of addressing what ethicists refer to as the "is/ought" dilemma. Morality is not merely experimental, discovered and evolved over the long course of human history. It is rather something by which we evaluate all of human history, and it is only a moral law that is not produced by random changes over time that can give us some meaningful reason to believe that what we have now in moral systems is better than the systems of our distant ancestors. Indeed, often we look at the ancients and note that they had things right in various ways from which we have departed. But note well that this thing that is used to evaluate historical evolution or devolution is not itself the product of evolution.

In short, the atheistic system can give us observation of moral systems--the "is" of ethical language. What atheism cannot give us is any meaningful foundation for "ought" language. It reduces to something like, "person A in circumstance A1 killed person B." But then the atheist goes on to note that, "person C in circumstance A1 did not kill person B." We are tempted to evaluate the circumstance and conclude that one was right and the other wrong, but how can atheism provide any such conclusion?

Lecture Series: Lecture 6: Rational Arguments for The Existence of God

2010-09-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

And now to the rational arguments for the existence of God. At the outset of such an endeavor there are some who are offended. "God cannot be proved by human arguments," they say. "It is plain arrogance that makes men think they can capture God in an argument," etc.

Let me make it clear that I believe that God's existence, according to the argument of Scripture, is a rational necessity. It is abundantly clear that God exists, wholly apart from any biblical revelation (Rom 1). The atheist who denies God's existence or the pantheist who worships creature rather than creator have both violated what they know to be true--namely, that God exists and that He is not us! They are not "seekers" or "neutral reasoners" considering all sides of an argument. They deny what they know to be true! They are like the man standing on the train tracks with a train bearing down on him denying that trains exist or claiming that the train is only an illusion.

It occurs to me that the various arguments for God's existence are merely an extension of the logic of Romans 1. "What may be known about God is obvious, having been clearly seen by what has been made." So let's look at each argument in turn:

1. The Cosmological Argument:

Premise 1 - Everything that comes into being has a cause of its being.
Premise 2 - The universe came into being.
Conclusion - The universe has a cause of its being.

(For the structure of this argument I am indebted to William Lane Craig)

Of course the question then becomes, "what is a sufficient cause for the appearance of something like the universe?" When we consider everything that the universe contains, particularly in our small section of it, then one must look for a cause that makes sense. One would not say that the ingredients of the cake are the cause of the cake. Simply finding the composite parts of the universe does nothing to explain why they are composed in the precise ways that they are. Descartes principle is perhaps helpful here. He said that in our experience causes are greater than their effects. We do not see order caused by disorder or intelligence by non-intelligence. Thus the sufficient cause of the universe must be something greater than the universe. God certainly fits that description and thus cause and effect leads us back to an absolute beginning of cause and effect.

One critic, Gordon Stein, suggested that this same argument could be applied to God. If everything must have a cause, then God of course must have a cause. But again, that is not exactly what Christians are saying. We are saying that "everything that comes into being" must have a cause. And God did not come into being. If he did, then of course we need to start looking at the conditions prior to God for an explanation of His existence. But surely, as Aristotle has noted, there can be no "infinite regress of causes" here. Surely there is something that is stable and original, whether that be matter or God. The question posed by the Cosmological argument is simple. Which is a better candidate for an absolute causal origin to the universe, matter or God?

2. The Kalam Cosmological Argument:

Premise 1 - Adding one event to another can never result in an infinite number of events in time.

Premise 2 - The universe is just such a collection of events.

Premise 3 - The universe is not actually infinite, but had a beginning.

Imagine for a moment a ladder. Each rung of the ladder represents a specific temporal event, like the moment that just passed. Now imagine that there are an infinite number of rungs on the ladder going downward. If the present moment is a specific rung on the ladder, how could that rung be reached if one needed to pass an infinite number of rungs before one could touch it? Such is the dilemma presented by the Kalam scholars of the middle ages.

If there is an infinite collection of events going into the past, how did the present moment ever come into being? Zeno's paradoxes relate somewhat to the various challenges to Kalam. For example, Geometry tells us that there are an infinite number of points between where I sit and the wall, thus I will never reach the wall, because to do so I must traverse the distance by half, and then that distance by half, and so on without end. But of course I know that I can walk to the wall. So is mathematics deceiving me about the nature of reality or is reality deceiving me about the nature of mathematics? Zeno believed that reality was deceiving me and that math was more nearly real. His conclusion was that reality was a kind of wholly stable mathematical entity, a kind of complex equation, and that there is no such thing as motion or change. Motion and change are illusory, based completely on our inadequate perceptions. The way to move beyond these deceptions is to practice mathematics.

The implications of this are rather interesting. For example, if you stare at the clock right now, there are an infinite number of points between where the second hand is now and the next number on the clock. Since it must traverse an infinite number of points, the next second can never arrive, correct?

Neurotransmitters travel between cells in the brain over a space, which also contains an infinite number of points, which means that thoughts can never be completed because they can never cross this microscopic yet infinite distance.

All of this seems to indicate, as the Kalam argument suggests, that there is a difference between potential infinites (a number of points on a graph in the abstract) and actual infinites (what it would mean if there really were an infinite number of points between point a and point b in our experience).

The Kalam argument suggests that there is a difference between math in the abstract and actual events in time. Math is merely analogous to our experiences, but is not identical (isn't that comforting). Thus the best explanation for an absolute origin of events in time is something outside of time, not subject to it, who is a sufficient explanation for the nature of motion and change. Surely something that is itself subject to change cannot be an explanation for change anymore than a moving universe can explain the movement of the universe.

Another way to say this is simply to note that time is not the same thing as the measurement of time. One is mathematical, the other reality. The measurement is merely analogous to the reality. In that sense, 5:30 is not really all that significant, at least not nearly as significant as the events that take place in that space of time labeled with the numbers 5:30. But the point is that before 5:30 was 5:28, and before that yesterday, and before that last year, and so on until the absolute beginning of time. God is the best accounting for an absolute beginning to the events we measure mathematically.

3. The Telelogical Argument:

Premise 1 - The fine tuning of the universe for the appearance of intelligent life is either due to necessity, chance or design.

Premise 2 - It is not due to necessity or chance.

Premise 3 - The universe was designed.

The core of this argument rests on premise 2. Why is it unacceptable to believe that the universe is necessary as it is or is due to chance?

On the necessity argument, two things can be mentioned. The first is a rather philosophical point and the second a more scientific one. First, we continue our enquiries into a question until we have a simple and satisfactory answer for a phenomenon. By simple we mean an answer that is a kind of indivisible, rock bottom answer, requiring no further parsing. For example, no one really asks why we are breathing animals. The answer we have for this is sufficient and requires no further probing. It just is that way! It is futile to spend one's life studying why there are laws of attraction or why 2 and 2 make 4. On such enquiries, simple, rock-bottom answers requiring no further explanation have been reached.

Now is that the case with the universe as we know it. Which is a simple explanation of the fine tuning of the universe? Matter or God? Matter is simply not sufficient as an explanation for order. One can think of many follow up questions to such a solution. Why does matter behave as it does? Why is it organized as it is? Why did it come alive on this planet? How did it come alive? Is there anything significant about it or is it in itself accidental to the structure of the universe, etc.

The second reason we can reject necessity as an explanation of the order in the universe relates to new discoveries in physics. This fits now under the heading, "Fine tuning." Essentially the argument here is that even the physical laws and constants of the universe are set for the appearance of material diversity like we find on the earth. From gravity to atomic forces to electromagnetism, all of the physical constants are set within an extremely narrow range for the appearance of a life-permitting planet like the earth. The point here is that the universe could have been different, could have possessed greater gravity, greater electromagnetic radiation, etc. So these values for gravity and atomic forces, etc. are not necessary. What, or who, created a universe with the primary conditions necessary for the emergence of stars, planets, light and heavy elements? The only other explanations available are chance or design.

Chance is an absurd explanation for fine tuning. Is it possible that a tornado passing through a junk yard can produce a 747 jumbo jet? Sure, it is remotely possible, but is anyone going to bet one's life on it? And, is it a better explanation than design?

Dr. Victor Stenger, an atheist physicist, has accused Christians of merely "arbitrarily excluding" low probability as an explanation for the emergence of an ordered universe. He points out that there are many low probability events that occur in the world, such as the birth of any one child. How many thousands of sperm are involved? And how many millions and even billions were involved if one considers all of one's ancestors as well? And no one reaches for "divine guidance" to explain the fortuitous birth of a particular baby from these billions of options.

Or consider the lottery. Here is a game with extremely low probabilities of winning. And yet somebody always wins. Is it a miracle? Divine design? No, says Stenger.

Now these objections are rationally absurd for any adolescent trained in rudimentary logic. His first argument commits the fallacy, "affirming the consequent." Consider the argument as a syllogism:

Premise 1 - If evolution occurred, then the improbable is possible.

Premise 2 - The improbable is possible (cite an example or two).

Conclusion - Therefore, evolution occurred.

One can see readily that the argument offends by affirming the second part of the conditional statement, and this of course proves nothing about the antecedent (first part of the conditional statement). Just because one can prove that some improbable events occur does not mean that the particular improbable event in view also occurred. If I tell you that some person was struck by lightening (an improbable event) and then go on to tell you that an alien culture will invade the earth in 20 years, killing all humanity, will you believe me? Remember, I just cited an improbable event, so you should believe me when I tell you that another improbable event is going to occur. Silly, right?

Another significant point can be mentioned: Is the birth of a child really a low probability event? Perhaps the joining of a particular egg and sperm is a low probability event, but that event operates within the framework of an extremely high probability event--namely, that when a man and women join in intercourse at the appropriate time, the likelihood of a sperm and an egg joining is significant.

The same can be said of the lottery. Perhaps it is a low probability that a particular participant in the lottery game will win it, but it is highly probable, even certain, that someone will win it, because that is how the game was "set up." One would not conclude that just because a low probability event takes place within the game that the game itself is an artifact of chance. Even Aristotle noted that chance explains some things, but not everything. More will be said on this when we get to the science and Christianity unit.

4. The Ontological Argument:

Anselm's version reads thus:

Premise 1 - Even a fool can conceive of a perfect being. (This Anselm based on our common experience. We all have the idea of a perfect being in our minds.)

Premise 2 - Things that exist in reality are greater than things that exist in the imagination alone. (Think Santa Clause... wouldn't he be even greater if he existed?)

Premise 3 - The perfect being must exist in reality, otherwise we could think of something greater.

Conclusion - The perfect being exists in reality and we call Him God.

Now this version of the ontological argument was, in the estimation of most philosophers, fairly well dismantled by Immanuel Kant. Kant noted that "existence cannot be predicated of a subject." When considering the subject/predicate relationship, we don't consider "existence" to be a property. While it may be true that an imaginary island would come with a certain set of predicates (properties, adjectives, descriptions), existence itself is not something that comes with the idea of any island, real or imagined. And if you added "existent" to an imaginary island, it would do nothing to add to its greatness.

Perhaps this is the best way to say this: "existence" does not add to the perfection of something--it merely identifies whether or not there is such a perfect thing in that class of things. It is a separate judgment from the quality of the thing under question.

An illustration of this point: I cannot meaningfully say that so and so is intelligent, beautiful, kind and "exists."

Or say it this way: Descartes and Anselm said, "If it's perfect, it must exist." Kant says, "If it exists, then it exists; and if it doesn't, then it doesn't... but this says nothing about its perfection." Thus, whether or not God exists is a separate question, for Kant, from those properties would make Him a great being, real or imagined. But simply acting as though "existence" is a property of His perfection does not "define Him into being."

Now this criticism may seem devastating, but there are efforts alive today among Christian philosophers to resurrect the ontological argument. Perhaps the best attempt comes from the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Here is his attempt:

Premise 1 - It is possible that there is a maximally great being.

Premise 2 - A maximally great being would exist in every possible world (that is, His existence would be necessary).

Premise 3 - One of the possible worlds is Alpha (the actual world).

Conclusion - God exits in Alpha.

Surely most people can agree that it is at least possible that a maximally great being exists. But if a person acknowledges this premise, the argument pulls him in, because it would surely count against the greatness of a "maximally great being" if He could not exist in all logically possible worlds. But among the logically possible worlds will be the actual one, so God must exist in it.

To be clear, Plantinga's ambitions are realistic here. He does not believe that this argument proves God's existence, but he does believe that it makes belief in the existence of God reasonable. There is surely nothing to keep a person from denying premise 1, but there is also nothing to prevent someone from affirming it. It does seem reasonable after all, and the logic of the argument from there is sound.

5. The Moral Argument:

Premise 1 - If there is no God, then there is no objective morality.

Premise 2 - There is objective morality.

Conclusion - There is a God.

Again, I am indebted to William Lane Craig for the logical structure of this age old argument. Here is an eminently clear statement of the Christian argument from objective morality. Much more will be said on this particular argument in the next lecture as we examine C.S. Lewis' concise summation of the moral argument in book one of Mere Christianity.

Bad Arguments:

6. Appeal to the Bible:

The Bible says that God exists and the Bible is God's Word, so God must exist. One can readily see that this argument commits the fallacy "begging the question." It assumes the thing it is trying to prove. One has a lot of work to do before one can say anything about the link between God's existence and the Bible. Perhaps it would be best to demonstrate that theism is reasonable first, and then to ask which of the theistic religions provides the necessary evidence of divine revelation. Once we do this, I think it is clearly true that Christianity offers compelling bibliography (textual evidence).

7. Appeal to Miracles:

This commits the same fallacy as the appeal to the Bible. Here are the most common atheistic objections and a few responses to those objections:

"Miracles are unusual occurrences. Shouldn't there be more evidence of them." But of course this is non-sense, because they are, by definition, unusual occurrences, meaning that not everyone is going to see one. If they did, then they would be "normal" or "usual" occurrences, and then the atheist is merely going to question the origin of the "normal," just as he does in cases such as DNA or other forms of design in nature. And so we reach stalemate.

"Miracles violate nature." It is seen by many atheists as self-contradictory that we claim that God is the source of natural law and then he "violates" natural law by doing miracles. But surely this isn't obvious. If the world God creates includes the possibility of bending nature for His purposes initially, then it is not a violation. What the naturalist is saying is merely this: "In a purely material world, any intrusion of the supernatural would be impossible." But only he believes that the world is purely material. If the world contains God, spirits, souls and the like, then nature is rather unpredictably interacting with forces outside of her. And thus when unusual events happen, the naturalist says, "ah, nature is mysterious and splendid." And the supernaturalist says, "ah, providence is mysterious and splendid." And we reach stalemate again.

"You have burden of proof." This is just an uninteresting objection. Whether we are talking about something that is an unusual natural event or a super-natural event, either requires some evidence. So the naturalist, with his claim that life came from non-living chemicals, or the supernaturalist, with his claim to miracles, both have burden of proof, and both have faith that their theories will be vindicated. And so we reach stalemate again.

"Do a miracle and I'll believe." If we produce a miracle, it is conceivable that our skeptical friends will simply claim that it is merely an "unusual natural occurrence." Certainly there are many unrepeatable natural occurrences in the history of the world, so the skeptic has an easy out. And we reach stalemate again.

Perhaps for the true observers of miracles stalemate is obliterated by a shining undeniable event. But then again, it occurs to me that if a skeptic is committed to his skepticism, he would touch the wounds in Jesus hands and then accuse him of being an illusionist. Stalemate!

All I'm pointing to is the reality that even if we supply the event, it must still be interpreted, and the interpretation will be according to an underlying worldview. If that worldview simply cannot allow for the possibility of miracles, then it becomes a kind of "unassailable naturalism" as Geisler puts it.

9. Appeal to Pascal's Wager:

Blaise Pascal suggested that if we bet on God and turn out to be wrong, then we have lost nothing. If we bet on atheism and it turns out there is a God, then we have lost eternity.

But again it is simply not obvious that Pascal is right on this. If we bet on God and turn out to be wrong, it is still the case that we lose much. If the Christian dedicates his life to Jesus, but God does not exist, and thus Jesus was deluded, then the Christian has wasted his life. The stakes are high indeed!

It is still true that if the atheist bets there is no God, and there turns out to be a God, he has lost a great deal, but Pascal's wager says nothing about whether such a God really exists or doesn't exist. It only highlights the fact that such a choice requires an assessment of the cost. Curiously though, it only calls attention to the cost to the atheist. The cost for being wrong in this is high to both the atheist and the Christian. Paul himself says in I Cor 15 that if there is no resurrection, Christians are to be "pitied" and they are "still in their sins."

Church and State Relations for the Martyr Idealist

2010-09-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

As a brief reminder, the "Martyr Idealist" is a person who believes that Jesus has called us to address the matter of evil in the world the way he did--that is, to confront it, incite it against ourselves, absorb it if necessary and emerge triumphant in resurrection if it comes to the matter. The oversimple title "Christian pacifist" is unacceptable to the spirit of Christ. He didn't do simply nothing about evil; He went to the cross! The cross is the solution to human evil. In it alone is the power not merely to control evil, but to convert it. As Christians we are to "take up our crosses" and follow hard after Jesus.

Recently a question emerged during a discussion with some bright men over this issue, and it had to do with the rights of the state to prosecute and kill other men for breaking its laws.

Here is a variation of one of the more thought provoking questions: As people called to forgive wrongs, can we in good conscience report on a murderer? I think he had in mind a contrite congregant, who, in confidence, shares his secret. What is the pastor to do?

A couple foundational points should be made: As a general principle, the Church does not have a right to block the freedoms the state has been granted by God. Note that these are permissive boundaries. God does not sanction the way governments carry out their business, though in some instances what they do is not opposed to God's will; He merely allows them time to do things as they desire.

The active mission of the Church is set in contradistinction to the "powers and authorities" of this world, not because they should be, but because that is what the "powers and authorities" insist upon. God has asked us to obey the governing authorities insofar as they do not require the Christian community within it to deny its distinctiveness. Practically, this is a matter not of what wrongs the state chooses to do, or the degree to which the state insists upon operating independently of God; instead, it has to do with the state forcing the Church to act in ways that depart from the gospel or teachings of Jesus.

This is why in my view it is not inconsistent for Christians to pay taxes. We are merely responding to what the state requires and the state is then using those resources in just and unjust ways. All the while, the Christian can and should argue for the just use of tax resources, but he is no more culpable for the misuse of tax money than a robbed man is responsible for the misuse of his resources. In the state, a man's tax resources don't have to be spent funding abortions or unjust wars--that is the state's choice and so the state is culpable.

With that background, how might a Martyr Idealist answer the question?

1. It is true that, as a Christian, I give up the right to punish a contrite sinner. If Christ absorbed our punishment at the cross and as such gave up his right to punish others for their sins, then how can I insist that forgiven men should be punished? To suggest that a man can be saved and still should be punished is wholly consistent with purgatory. Imagine a case in which a man has committed a murder, and later turns contritely to Christ for forgiveness, but then dies before he can be punished for his crimes. Christians are firmly convinced that murderers who turn to Jesus should still pay for their crimes. Okay, what about the man just mentioned? How is it at all just that some men are saved and punished while others are saved and not punished?

2. Of course the state is in a present position of rebellion against any such notion as mentioned above. For the state, forgiveness and punishment have nothing to do with each other. One can forgive and punish simultaneously, and indeed one should do so. So we have a dilemma--namely, what the state insists on doing with murderers and what the Church would do. And so we go back to our point above: Is this a matter on which the state is forcing the Christian to do something against his own kingdom citizenship? No, for the obvious reason that it is the state that insists on killing a contrite murderer. It will be their act, not the Church's.

3. I can maintain both that the state has been granted permission to kill the contrite murderer and that it shouldn't simultaneously, just as I can maintain that the state is granted permission to misuse resources and shouldn't simultaneously.

4. I would insist that the truly contrite murderer, though completely forgiven by God and the Christian community, would seek reconciliation with his victims and entrust himself to whatever justice those victims see fit to level against him. Perhaps he can argue for mercy, but if the people he harmed are outside the church and have not been touched by Christ's mercy, then it is unlikely any clemency will be granted. Surely the state operates wholly outside any faint understanding of the mercy of God in Christ. Any clemency offered by the state will be motivated by political or economic expediency and not the mercies of God.

5. If the murderer does not accept the terms of reconciliation, then in effect he forces our hand by no longer identifying with Christ's way. We can explain that if he will not turn himself in to the authorities, then we must. This in no way compromises our forgiveness because it is still the case that the state has a claim on the lives of murderers, a claim that Christians cannot actively block (as mentioned above). But again, it is not inconsistent for us to turn such a man in and maintain that the state should accept Christ's way of dealing with him. If this man becomes enraged at this and decides to kill us for turning him in, we must accept it as Martyr Idealists with a conscience clean because we have proclaimed the glory of Christ as the solution to the sin of murder and not the state.

A Contrast Study: Informing on Hidden Jews v. Informing on a Murderer in America:

We know that in both cases, the state has its freedoms (time granted by God to do things as it pleases). In one case, we seem to think it okay to block the actions of the state while it is unacceptable to do so in the other case.

The two cases are not analogous, even for the Martyr Idealist, in the following ways. One, in the case of the Nazi's insisting that we inform on hidden Jews, it must be clear that the Jews are not guilty of anything, except offending against the capricious laws of an unjust state. That unjust state forced its citizens into informing on the whereabouts of hidden Jews, in effect making them spies of the state. It is wholly consistent with both the ethic of the Martyr Ideal and the ethic of just war to lie to such an unjust authority. Why? Because they are forcing one to deny one's kingdom ethic in order to actively advance the cause of killing Jews.

Think of it thus: even without the imperative of mercy coming into it, these people (Jews in Nazi Germany) should not die. Taking their lives simply because they are Jewish is in principle unjust. Not so in the case of the murderer in America. Taking his life is in principle just (the principle of mercy notwithstanding).

Where is this going? All of this leads to a key observation about the difference between the two cases. Because of the differences suggested here, a crucial temporal distinction emerges. The Nazi's requiring that we inform on Jews not only involves us in the unjust killing of Jews, but also immediately ensures their deaths.

On the other hand, the American state requiring us to inform on murderers does not ensure their immediate deaths, because there is a temporal gap between the time of the arrest and the time of the killing; a time in which an argument can still be made about capital punishment as distinct from the unjust killing. As such, informing on murderers neither involves us in the deaths actively, nor is the result immediate. Time is afforded to argue for innocence, clemency, etc. If the state chooses to kill the murderer, it will be clear that it is the state doing it.

6. Finally, let us imagine a simpler time, say Puritan America. Imagine this issue comes up in a small Puritan community where there is literally no other governmental claim. Is it not possible that a contrite murderer in a Puritan community could be wholly forgiven by every member of that community, and that the spiritual leaders of the community would ask that the murderer voluntarily seek reconciliation with his victims, and that the victims would accept the terms agreed upon for this man's restoration and reconciliation? And curiously all of this could occur without the man enduring one lash. Instead, he would have the harder road of looking his victims in the eye and seeking their forgiveness. In one sense, punishment is the path of least resistance. The Christian way is far more difficult because it insists that the sinner be changed to meet the needs of the community. The world's way requires nothing of the sinner except that he sit there and die.

Lecture Series: Lecture 5: Foundations for Worldview Apologetics

2010-09-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

The thesis for this class is from Dr. Greg Bahnsen, a presuppositionalist (a particular kind of Christian intellectual... we'll discuss later) of the first order: "We set forth the absolute necessity of Christianity in order to make sense of reason, love, moral law, human dignity and every other intelligible human experience."

Bahnsen spent most of his career comparing the various major worldviews in order to demonstrate the inherent superiority of Christianity. And that will be the program of this class in the second semester.

We will demonstrate that when these major worldviews are compared, Christianity emerges as necessarily true! Yes, you heard me! True! Not probable or possible or relatively better than others. Necessarily true! But the only way to be convinced of this is to learn to think "worldviewishly." One must have sufficient knowledge of the worldviews in question to be able to establish first that they are antithetical (they are incompatible... not different paths to the same place); and second, one must then demonstrate that there are good reasons to believe that one of them is right and the others, while possessing certain truthful ideas, on the whole are wrong.

Before we can make progress, we must establish a few foundational terms. Nothing of what we will say in this semester will make sense unless there is first some understanding of these foundational terms:

1. Fideism: Essentially this is the idea that we simply "believe something into being." You can detect a Christian fideist by asking the simple question, "How do you know Christianity is true?" He or she will respond with something along the lines of... "well, you can't know for sure--that's why it's called faith..." or... "I don't know, but I believe it," etc.

Christianity unfortunately has a long history with fideism. Perhaps a couple of examples would be instructive. First, consider the case of Galileo. When he proved that Copernicus was right about the notion of a heliocentric (sun centered) solar system, he was invited to a discussion with Catholic authorities who believed otherwise. When he would not recant, he was shown the implements of torture, at which point he reconsidered and signed the letter of recantation. Only in the 20th century did the Catholic Church apologize for this.

When Darwin offered his theory during the 19th century, few Christians knew what exactly to do with it. Since they could not offer an informed response, many of them simply covered their ears and pretended they didn't hear these difficult intellectual and scientific challenges. Then they surrounded themselves with others who wouldn't ask difficult questions. As a result, Christianity lost much of its influence in academia. This is perhaps best displayed by the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in the early 20th century in Dayton, Tennesee. Christians won, but only because we were still in the majority and not because our arguments were particularly compelling. In time it became clear that in winning that trial, Christians lost the intellectual battle. We won by force alone. Curiously, in winning the legal battle, we lost the "worldview" war, and as a result, evolution is far more intellectually respected in our day than is creationism.

This is all classic fideism at base. When Christians don't know what to say in response to serious intellectual and evidentiary challenges to the faith, and doggedly cling to belief anyway, then that is pure fideism. When a person responds to the thoughtful skeptic by saying, "I don't know what to say to you, but I just believe," then they are a fideist.

Let me make it very clear: This class in no way endorses or promotes fideism as a substitute for true faith.

Fideists are often revealed when "good little Christian boys and girls" go off to college. There they are exposed to a wider world and impressive, genial (nice) secularists. They don't know what to say to all of these new ideas, so they do one of two things: One, they are simply overwhelmed and assimilated, their Christianity broken down and discarded. They join the party because clearly Christianity cannot survive the process of growing up and becoming a cosmopolitan progressive thinker. One must abandon Christianity like one abandons belief in magic. They are features of childhood artifically maintained by adults, for some odd reason. Of course, those simply absorbed into the culture are not in danger of becoming fideists, but the process that forces some to throw in the towel causes others to become fideists.

The college fideist allows a split to occur in her psychic life, resulting in a practical rearrangement of life. Since she knows that Christianity cannot answer difficult intellectual challenges, she retreats from these challenges and then surrounds herself with others who do the same. These people never talk about such "dry" and "philosophical" matters. The mind is for school; the heart is for the church. They may even have to endure a philosophy class or two, but all of us can do that. We can switch on our brains, do the bare minimum, and then switch them back off again. Christianity is an affair of the heart and not the mind. One is called to feel something about the Trinity and not think about it or explain it. The problem here is that some people want to hear reasons as to why we are Christians. If we always say, "we feel that it is right," then of course they will rightly reply, "Well, I feel that it is wrong," and we make no progress.

To simplify this notion, let us call fideism an "all heart, no head" kind of philosophy, or perhaps a "mostly heart and only a little head" kind of philosophy.

2. Intellectual or Philosophical Phariseeism: If fideism is an "all heart, no head" philosophy, philosophical phariseeism is precisely the opposite; "all head, no heart." The best representatives of this group in literature are, well, the Pharisees in the New Testament, and the Sophists in the writings of Plato.

It seems clear from the New Testament that the Pharisees didn't particularly impress Jesus. They were generally well respected, even among the elite of their society. But read Matthew chapter 23 and you'll see that Jesus looses most of his venom on these respectable men.

For Jesus, the issue seemed to be that they were far more dangerous than other corrupt human beings because they were also intelligent and externally virtuous human beings. They wielded power and influence in their corrupt attitudes and motivations. The evil of most men is like a poisened glass of water. The evil of some select men is like a poisened well spring. Such were the Pharisees.

They knew their doctrine and could argue it with anyone. They commanded the admiration of their countrymen, but they did not love God. They loved what God could "do for them." They loved to use his name for leverage with the people.

In our day the philosophical pharisee is the student who can earn straight A's in Bible classes at a Christian school, but could not possibly care less about God. He may even be clever enough to make everyone around him think he is a "good Christian" kid, but he is manipulating everyone to feed his own selfish desires. He needs to "play" the religious power brokers just as he needs to "play" other power brokers if he wishes to get ahead in life. And so he plays the game, and he is a good player. But of course even if he deceives everyone, God is not deceived.

Plato's reaction to the Sophists is similar to Jesus' reaction to the Pharisees, and for many of the same reasons. The Sophists were trained in rhetoric, attended the finest schools for Greek boys, and could argue any position, and often did so. They were even paid to argue a particular political, ethical or religious issue before a watching crowd. They didn't really believe the positions they were arguing, but loved the game. They loved to out-manuever an opponent in rhetorical combat. They argued for the sake of argument alone. This is why to this day we say that the person who argues merely to hear the sound of his own voice is guilty of "sophistry." If one does not believe there is an end to argument, a truth to be discovered and applied, then surely all argument reduces to sophistry.

The curious thing about the sophist is that when his arguments are exposed as unworthy, his ego is wounded, and he becomes defensive, angry. He has been bested in argument and that is all he can see. He stopped believing in truth and so cannot humbly accept defeat as an opportunity for growth. He only knows to redouble his efforts at asserting his will, perhaps even seeking the destruction of his enemy. This is how Plato views the death of Socrates, his mentor. It was a group of inferior men killing a superior man for no other reason than the affront to their egos.

3. Faith: And so the man or woman of faith is neither a fideist nor a pharisee. But this means that Christianity, and philosophy in general, has both a head and a heart. Lewis says that the Christian should have a child's heart and a grown-up's head. He is humble, teachable, trusting, but is also logical, critical, careful and competent. My definition of faith, which I'm sure is largely stolen from my own mentors in life, is simply: Trusting good authority in what is unknown, because that authority has shown itself (or himself/herself) trustworthy in the known.

The case of Abraham in Gen. 22 is instructive here. Abraham of course is celebrated in Hebrews and elsewhere as the prototypical "man of faith." He trusted God and it was credited to him as righteousness. What does it mean to trust God? Genesis 22 tells us. Why did Abraham actually obey the instruction to offer his son as a human sacrifice to God? It made no sense. After all, God had required only animal sacrifice, unlike many of the Canaanite deities, who did require human sacrifices. Not only that, but God had systematically eliminated every natural possibility of Abraham and Sarah having a child. They waited 25 years for the child to be born. God promises that through this child a nation as numerous as the stars will emerge. God allows a period of bonding between child and parents and then asks Abraham to kill the child. It makes no sense at all.

Does God want Abraham to embrace contradictions? Does God want Abraham to do the absurd? God says, "I'm not like the Canaanite gods," and then acts exactly like one, capricious, malicious, merely asserting arbitrary power because no one is going to stop him.

No. None of this is adequate as an explanation for Abraham's actions. Abraham must surely know that God will not contradict His clearly revealed character. He trusts God in the unknown, not because he is making a "leap into the absurd," and thereby embracing an irrational God. His trust in God is motivated by an understanding of God's clearly revealed character and consistent actions. He knows God, and thus He knows that God will "make a way" that will not result in the loss of his son, the very son promised and delivered by God in the first place.

Faith and reason are thus inextricably linked, as we have already discussed in the philosophy of education unit.

4. Worldview: Perhaps the best way to understand a worldview is to imagine a set of glasses. If you are wearing blue glasses, everything in the world will appear to be blue. It won't be that the things are actually blue, but they are filtered to one's vision because the blue lenses are thus "interpreting" everything you see. A worldview is therefore an "interpretive lens through which we view the major issues of life."

Occasionally I meet a student who insists that he does not have a worldview, that "he would not live in such a box," that "his vision of the world is larger than any limiting worldview," etc. This usually comes with a reminder that I should not "box him in" or "label him," etc. All lovely sentiments, but predictable, and, in the end, silly.

To reject worldviews is to embrace an anti-worldview worldview, or to default uncritically to what other worldviews say on various issues without analyzing each opinion on various issues for consistency. In my estimation, the student who says this fits quite neatly into the worldview of postmodernism without even realizing it. He just wants to say whatever he wants to say and doesn't want to believe he could ever be wrong or have to defer to those wiser than he is. Socrates described such a life when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

We discuss the three major worldviews in a bit. (see below)

5. Apologetics: This term comes from the Greek word apologia, meaning "answer or defense." When Christians first encounter the idea, they might be tempted to think this term has something to do with "apologizing" for the Christian faith, or acting defensively. The simple definition is, "a rational defense of a worldview." And since Christianity is a worldview, it also requires a rational defense. One can be a "Christian apologist," an "Atheistic apologist," etc. The term "defense" is also somewhat misleading, since one can also be aggressive in one's representation of a particular worldview.

6. Presuppositional Apologetics: Perhaps the best way to understand this approach to Christian apologetics is to state it briefly: If Christianity is not true, then some other worldview must be true, but all others are untenable (irrational), therefore Chrsitianity wins by attrition (the others die off or logically self-destruct).

7. Evidentiary Apologetics: Historically, this has been the major emphasis of Christian apologetics. The basic idea is that there is sufficient historical evidence to validate belief in Christianity. The big three areas here are evidences for the Bible, the resurrection and the general design argument. In this class we will discuss all three.

The Three Major Worldviews: Every worldview holds a position on three major areas of philosophy. They are epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. Mr. Martin, our senior ethics teacher at BCHS, has captured the ingredients of a worldview with a helpful acronym; R.I.P.E. Every worldview involves a position on reality (this would be the notion of metaphysics). Every worldview contains a view of identity, purpose and ethics. And these all come from a particular authority (epistemology). So, let's break that down again.

Mr. Martin's worldview criteria: Reality (what is real?), Identity (who am I, what is humanity?), Purpose (why am I here?) and Ethics (how ought I to behave?).

The general criteria for a worldview: Metaphysics (what has substance/reality?), Epistemology (how do I know anything, how do I come to knowledge of truth?), Ethics (how ought I to behave?).

With these criteria in mind, lets look at the three major worldviews we will discuss in this class:

Atheism:

1. Atheistic Epistemology: It is a fascinating question to ask the atheist, "From whence comes your authority?" In the end, he must say mankind. This is also why atheism is synonymous with "humanism." It becomes humanistic epistemologically. There is no authority outside of humanity we can rely on to guide us into what we might name "truth."

In fairness, most atheists would refer to themselves as "scientific thinkers" or even "empiricists," meaning that they base all their knowledge on observation and reason. Religions are therefore a creation of mankind, once he has taken in various impressions from the environment. We experience various things and then the mind goes to work creating ideas from these physical experiences. For the atheist, God did not create man in his image; it was man that created God in his image.

2. Atheistic Metaphysics: The atheist believes that reality reduces to "matter in motion," and "upredictable" motion at that. The philosophical term for this is "material monism." Matter is all there is, was, or ever will be. It takes on various forms, randomly, but in the end, there is only the stuff of the universe.

3. Atheistic Ethics: It would not be unfair to the atheistic position to refer to their various ethical systems as "relativistic" essentially. Since various perceptions of truth ultimately originate in mankind, then it must be the case that moral values also originate in mankind. The truth is that many atheistic thinkers plainly acknowledge that atheism ultimately leads to relativism in ethics.

One way to expose this relativism is to look at the motive/action problem in atheism. Since they believe that we are only physical beings with no eternal soul, then ultimately nothing outlives the body or the culture. As such, one is hard pressed to see why motive matters at all in ethics. All one need do is appease the controlling legal power by outward signs of obeisance. But what place can compassion or a deisre to benefit one's fellow man have in atheism?

A simple case in point. If atheism is true and there is no soul, then why should I not steal? Ultimately he is going to have to say something along the lines that I will be punished if I steal. In other words, my actions alone are measured and enforced by laws, but how can law impose ideals or motives upon a person? No law is ever going to make me want to protect my neighbor's belongings. If I find them exposed, and there is no chance of legal retribution, then I will take them, at least I would do so in an atheistic universe. The only thing an atheist can offer in the way of motivation to keep laws is "threat of punishment" or "promise of reward." The motive of individuals in keeping social laws is ultimately irrelevant.

Pantheism:

1. Pantheistic Epistemology: Knowledge does not come from observation, but from "within." Knowledge is not "imprinted" by the external world, and then tinkered around with by the mind. Knowledge is "created" by the mind and projected upon the world. If atheism is "externally" heavy in its epistemology, pantheism is "internally" heavy in its epistmology. Reality, including God, is not to be "known" by the mind, but "experienced" through a kind of mystical rapture. Pantheists often complain that westerners are always trying to master the universe with their puny minds instead of being caught up in the beauty of the mysterious and majestically interrelated universe in which we find ourselves.

2. Pantheistic Metaphysics: Both pantheism and atheism are monistic worldviews at bottom. The difference is that one tends toward the notion that observable material phenomena alone exist, and the other that unobservable spiritual or mystical phenomena alone exist. I say phenomena because reality to the monist appears to be "many" when in truth it is one thing. The pantheist believes that there exists one majestic interellated entity. God "is" everything, or perhaps is "in" everything. There are different names for this. The Hindu's call it Brahman. The Buddhists call it Nirvana. The American Transcendentalists called it Oversoul. New Ager's call it Gaia, or some, looking for scientific legitimacy, make appeals to the notion of energy. And of course George Lucas calls it The Force.

3. Pantheistic Ethics: Like Atheism, pantheistic ethics is relativistic, but it arrives at this via a more complicated path. Since God, or "ultimate reality" is an awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependency of the universe, then anything that prevents such an awareness must be the only "evil." This "evil" is most frequently referred to as "Karma." Karma involves attachment to the cycle of action and reaction, and can cause one, depending on the level of attachment, to be reborn into a lower life form through the process of reincarnation.

But note clearly that Karma is a purely subjective phenomenon. It is not an "objective" evil, but involves an individual's personal level of attachment. What this means is that there can be no action or person that is objectively wrong. As an illustration let's consider the case of a divorce. In pantheism, divorce itself is not right or wrong. But let's imagine that a person goes through with a divorce, but spends all of her time thinking about the loss, grieving indefinitely, obsessing over the good times now lost, etc. Such a person is doing something wrong because she is defining herself by the action and reaction of the divorce. She is bound up in Karmic attachments to the old relationship. Now imagine the reverse. She doesn't go through with the divorce, but constantly imagines the freedom that doing so might have brought, and obsesses about her spouses flaws. Again, but in this case making the opposite ethical choice, she is guilty of Karmic attachments to action and reaction. You'll note that in pantheism there is no objective moral value outside the individual that guides him or her into the right ethical choice. There is no right ethical choice; there is only the subjective manner in which the choice is made.

If the atheist discards motive and maintains that only actions can be right or wrong, determined of course by group consensus, then the pantheist holds the opposite position. Since the whole universe is good, even god-like, then nothing in it can be "wrong" or "bad." Thus, there can be no action or person that is right or wrong; only motives can be right or wrong. But notice what happens here. If that is true, then relativism naturally emerges. For I can kill thousands, and do so in a spirit of detachment. I can divorce, and do so in a spirit of detachment, etc. My "guilt" or "innocence" both come down to a mental trick.

Christianity:

1. Christian Epistemology: Christians learn through science, reason, experience, intuition and revelation from God.

But of course, the ultimate source of knowledge for the Christian comes from God himself in the form of Christian revelation. The primary source of this revelation is the Bible and Jesus Christ.

Once a college biology professor challenged this idea by asking his Christian students to study their Bibles for two weeks and then asked another group of students to study their biology texts for two weeks, after which there would be a comprehensive biology exam. He taunted that if the Bible is all the knowledge one needs then the Christians should outperform the biology students in the biology exam.

Now is there anyone more asinine than this college professor? No thinking Christian has ever suggested that the Bible contains all truth; only that what is in it is all true. And of course Scripture itself says that it contains everything necessary for "life and godliness," not that it contains everything for automobile mechanics. Truth is found elsewhere, but the Scriptures contain the central truths for managing life and for restoration of relationship with the God who made us. In that sense, it is the core philosophy that should manage all other philosophies of life and indeed all other knowledge.

2. Christian Metaphysics: The term most often used to describe the Christian metaphysic is "dualism." The term simply means a dynamic tension between two realities; in this case the spiritual and the material. It should be noted that it is not only strict religionists that maintain this notion, but also largely worldly people, like Plato. Plato's view was that there was a realm of changeless spiritual entities, called the forms, and a realm of shadows, or materialistic approximations of these changeless ideals.

Christians are not really Platonic dualists, but one must acknowledge some overlap between Plato and Christianity, especially in the realm of "moral ideals." Christians believe, for example, that mankind is a unique creature indeed. Man is, in the words of Lewis, a "spirit-beast." There is an organic interaction between the spiritual and physical aspects of man. We are neither angels (pure spirits), nor are we simply animals (pure biology). What happens to our bodies will affect our spirits and what happens to our spirits will affect our bodies. It is even questionable whether there can be any unambiguous Christian notion of "man" without this integration of spirit and body. On the one hand, Christians cannot confess a spirit existence for man wholly dismebodied; and, on the other hand, he certainly cannot conceive of man as a simple biological machine either.

3. Christian Ethics: Perhaps the simplest way to describe Christian ethics is to affirm the centrality of both motive and actions. There is such a thing as "human nature," in that we are built to function in a certain way with respect to moral virtue. And there is such a thing as a pattern of virtuous behavior, so that regardless of the man, a certain line of behavior is always right given a certain set of circumstances. Thus in the case of divorce, there are only very clear situations in which it is to be deemed acceptable, and those cases are clearly communicated and argued. One can get divorced with the right set of motivations, but that is still wrong. One can stay married with the wrong set of motivations, and that is a moral defect as well. Only doing the right thing for the right reasons in all cases is finally acceptable to the Christian. Of course, no one lives like this, and this fact leads to the notion of Christian salvation, but that must be saved for another day.

Lecture Series Lecture 4: Challenges to Education, Part III, The Narcissistic Culture

2010-06-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm struck by the Facebook/Reality TV world in which we live. Everyone thinks his or her life is fascinating. People today are always complaining that they have so little time and yet so many have ample time to nourish an endless vapid preoccupation with emotional narrative for its own sake.

As a philosophy teacher, I'm beginning to wonder what my teaching is going to mean to the increasing numbers of narcissists in my classes. The ideas are king in my class, not personal stories about my life or the lives of my students. Frankly I think that the Trinity doctrine is fascinating (because God is fascinating) and my life compared to the central theological and philosophical ideas is like comparing the scribblings of a child to the genius of Michelangelo. The irony is not lost on me. I'm utterly enthralled with topics like the nominalist/realist discussion while my students are captivated by stories, and stories that aren't even that interesting. They like stories about how funny a movie was, or how militant their parents are, or how another celebrity cheated on his wife. If I were to stop one of my lectures and just share a story about my daughter throwing up on me they would sit at rapt attention, even if the story was utterly unrelated to anything significant.

Some of my complaint here falls into the category, "the ravings of a cranky, middle-aged high school teacher," and I'm fine with that. But just as teens have so little interest in the things I find profoundly important, so I have little interest in their insufferable preoccupation with the dramatics of high school dating relationships or Vampire novels. And I'm tired of the excuse that they are immature, and so I should cut them some slack. There are, of course, exceptions to this staggering shallowness, but those few don't constitute a large enough number to challenge the present generalization.

And it is not wholly, or even primarily, their fault. This is a culture that is ideally suited to the production of narcissists. As I understand the term, the modern narcissist is the sort of person so self focused that he simply cannot develop a worldview or philosophy of life. He defaults to a self-view. The world exists as a stage upon which he is the star attraction. Other people exist only as mirrors, reflecting back to him some feedback on himself. In fact, he ceases to be interested in individuals. His interaction with the outside world becomes one unbroken self defining and self promoting exercise. For the narcissist, one is either above this mass of humanity or one is subsumed into it, and the narcissist feels entitled to be above it.

The curious thing about the modern narcissist is that, as students of our culture, they have seen others rise above the mass without doing anything significant. They watch regular people become celebrities on reality shows just because they have abrasive and colorful personalities, and for no other reason. They watch others become fashion experts on entertainment programs. They amass hundreds of Facebook friends and write a blog (cough, cough), all because they have come to believe that what they presently are is what the whole world should notice and value. The only problem for the narcissist apparently is being noticed by the right people rather than being the right person to notice. In fact, the last sentence here is so abstract that the narcissist would think it both boring and unworthy of the time necessary to understand it.

And so the narcissist firmly believes that she is presently a wonder of the world, worthy of a larger share of attention. She need not study, pursue a craft, improve on a talent or be a team player to build something larger than her name or image. All of that is for the nameless, faceless nobodies of society. They may need time for training or improvement, but she is ready for primetime.

The narcissist is not a listener. She is a commentator... on everything, because she is an expert on everything, including the things that people should or should not be experts about. Anything she doesn't know is deemed unworthy of knowing, of course. Her most devastating attack against anything uninteresting to her is to call it "boring," meaning, in most cases, things she can't understand. What to others is listening to her is only a pause in her running monologue about the world as she sees it. Every story, every idea, every metaphor in literature, every discussion of politics, movies, or any interaction with the outside world is a prompt for her to share some thrilling aspect of her life or perspective to others.

This is why the narcissist cannot understand philosophy. Philosophy has to do with thinking deeply about the nature of the world, how we come to know anything, what is real, what happens after death, what is ethically right, etc. But the narcissist already knows all of this without reference to "other people." Just raise any philosophical question and he'll tell you the answer. His emotions and intuition are sufficient to guide him wisely, and to guide you wisely. If you respond by saying that philosophers have already rejected his solution, he will just stare at you blankly, and up will come his devastatingly bored expression. And the conversation will be over. He need not develop a worldview because the world has shrunk to the narrow circumference of his life and experiences. Anything else is utterly irrelevant. He won't even argue with you about whether your answers are better than his. He will just yawn at you and proceed to the party, where a hundred friends writhe rhythmically to music that blares so loudly that it crushes all conversation, and people laugh at one liners while stumbling in the fog of consciousness brought on by beer, drugs and the role playing world of adolescent thought. Greatness is found there, but it is pretend greatness.

The narcissist is dreadfully discontented. Eventually reality intrudes. What is the percentage of people who become even pseudo-famous (reality show famous)? Minimal at best. How many high school narcissists will actually achieve fame and fortune? Precious few! And even the ones that do, if they do so as narcissists will have won the world and lost their souls. But what about the rest of them? Those who expected the world to rise up in ceaseless applause, and never realize this dream, come to hate the world. And why should they respond any other way? Imagine the poor pathetic narcissist in the winter of her days, having desperately attempted to be noticed only to discover that she remains insignificant, nameless, unknown to the world.

The narcissist cannot even be good at something because she obsesses about greatness. To be good is to be nothing. To be a good mother is not to be a famous mother. To be a good singer, perhaps making a modest living at it and improving one's craft, is to be nothing. To be a good writer or teacher or lawyer is not to be great, famous, noticed, and so to be good is to be insignificant, another member of the herd. If the narcissist discovers that she will never be great--that is, noticed--at something, then she will no longer bother trying to be good at that thing. Only being noticed for greatness matters. She has turned all goods into instrumental goods, in the words of Plato. She doesn't want to be a good mother because it is good in itself. She wants to be a great mother because there will be some personal payoff, some glory, that will belong to her if she works to that end.

And finally the narcissist will never view life as meaningful if it is not noticed on a grand scale. This and the previous point work hand in glove. Curiously the narcissist equates meaning with attention. Attention is meaning. Name any person who was significant in your family, who substantially moved your whole family line towards civility, grace, wisdom and happiness, and then consider if they were known. If they were not known, and certainly if we don't know them now, then their lives are without meaning. This is truly how the narcissist thinks. No wonder she responds so easily to half-wit celebrities and responds with vacant eyes to the teachings of Jesus, or even Confucius.

Let us say at the end of this discussion that the quintessential opposite of the narcissist is the humble man or woman, whose life exists for glories beyond himself or herself (see The Bible).

Lecture Series: Lecture 3:Challenges to Education, Part II, The Image Culture

2010-06-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

What if our arguments incite no passionate attacks, but only yawns? In our day, it is not as if truth is a matter of controversy, igniting heated debate on both sides of an issue. One is much more likely to find people willing to summon their passion in defense of their football team rather than in defense of their worldview, if they know what a worldview is. Your views about truth are not offensive to the typical pop-culture clone; they are just boring and irrelevant.

Neil Postman wrote a controversial and ground-breaking book detailing what he believed was a cataclysmic cultural shift away from a "word culture" to an "image culture." In this lecture, we will discuss the merits of some of his ideas.

But before we get into the basic outline of his work, let's consider an important historical movement, beginning with the time of Christ. And the way we will do this is to consider a key philosophical question: Where must we go to find the truth?

Jesus' day was an "oral culture," meaning that few people had access to books. Books were expensive and tedious to create, and were usually made of the skins of animals or papyrus, a plant substance from Egypt. They were meticulously hand copied by scribes who often dedicated the whole of their lives to this science.

In Jesus' day, the answer to the question about where one can find truth was simple, "in the scribe, or prophet, or sage, etc." The medium and the message were wholly integrated in the person who knew it. So, when Jesus says, "I am the truth," he means this literally, but also as an invitation to seek the truth that is not in a book, but rather is in Him.

In 1456 a remarkable event occurred. Discovery channel listed this invention as the most important invention in the history of man: You guessed it, Gutenberg invented the first movable type printing press. Before this event, the purchase of a Bible would cost a nobleman a year's salary. After its invention, even common peasants began to have access to the text. Culture shifted from "oral dependency" on a few intellectual aristocrats to the independence that comes with the written age. In short, culture ceased to be merely oral and became a written or book culture. And a slight but significant shift occurred: The medium and message began to be separated. The scribe or the sage were no longer needed because all one needed was a book, thereby allowing ideas to become disembodied and decontextualized from the original speaker. One did not need to go to the village shaman for healing; one could go to the library. One did not need to go to Jesus because He was now confined in a book, and one could go to him at one's leisure.

The downside of this is that an encounter with truth became not only disembodied from the speaker but also freed from its context in relationships. For example, if a person wanted to know whether he should divorce or not in Jesus' oral culture, and came to Jesus for advice, he would find himself embroiled in dialogue that would leave him without the possibility of misinterpretation. In the written age, one brings his questions about divorce to the text, but it doesn't answer back, so one is left with the possibility of interpreting it according to one's desires. God becomes not a person to encounter, but an idea confined to the pages of a book that I go to at my convenience and interpret according to my whims.

Of course the intention of the advocates of the written word were pure. Primarily they sought to capture permanently the essential truths of God and human nature, etc. They sought to use a medium--the written word--that they felt was well suited to this aim. In other words, their desire was simply that the medium would always be subservient to the message. And perhaps they were right. Perhaps most if not all of Jesus' teaching has been well preserved in the texts of Scripture. That is not presently my argument. My only argument is that one has certain liberties with an inanimate object like a text that one would not have with the living person of Jesus Christ standing in front of you. This shift from an "oral culture" to a "word/written culture" is significant.

One other interesting point about the word culture. It was generally believed, despite the challenges in finding the authors intended meaning in what he or she wrote, that the authors meaning could be found in the text. Finding meaning was paramount. In fact, it could reasonably be stated that, in practice, once an authors truth was discovered, the text itself could be discarded, because it had done its job in leading the seeker to the truth.

But culture shifted again, according to Postman, with the advent of television. If the culture of Jesus' day was an "oral culture," and that culture was replaced by a "word/text culture," then the culture that has displaced them all is the "image culture." The core premise of Postman's book appears to be the nature of the relationship between medium and message in such a culture. If in the oral culture, the medium and message are deeply integrated, and in the written culture the medium serves the message, then the image culture essentially discards or trivializes the message in favor of the medium. Note well the inversion from the written age, from sublimating the medium under the message to sublimating the message under the medium. According to Postman, now the medium is everything and the message is little more than an occasion or an excuse to engage the medium.

A simple evaluation of this by culture:

The oral culture and ethical instruction: If a controversial ethical question arose, the people would turn to the village prophet/scribe/sage for advice, or hold a town meeting in which the wisdom of various elders could be heard.

The written culture and ethical instruction: If a controversial ethical question arose, the people would "hit the books." Then the problem of interpretation would come up, in which case experts might be consulted, but they would be experts on the text.

The image culture and ethical instruction: If a controversial ethical question arose, the people would listen to the wittiest, most moving, most engaging person or story. The image of the speaker would win and not the best idea, for what can that even mean? This is why in our day Bill Mayr and John Stewart have more dutiful disciples than does Jesus. This is also why the "image pastor" will have a huge church in our day, but the "idea pastor" will always have a small one.

On a practical level, Postman notes that it is simply naive to think that medium and message are or can be unrelated. And yet many Christians say things like, "It doesn't matter how you present the gospel, as long as the gospel is presented." But how something is presented is essential. Students often complain that it is difficult to absorb the droning of a monotone teacher, but what about a preacher who tells only funny stories for 20 minutes and then a 5 minute "message?" What about a death metal band inaudibly screaming, "JESUS LOVES YOU?" Is the medium aligned with its message in these cases?

Postman's basic message in this is that television comes freighted with inherent limitations. It is inferior to the written word in its ability to convey deep and complex truths. Obviously television uses words, but Postman notes that they become "accessories to images."

By way of illustration, Postman discusses the fact that TV preaching is neither good TV nor good preaching. Generally no one watches it because it is merely a "taking head" projected superfluously under the pretense of "spreading the good news." The true motive is often megalomaniacy (a desire for glory, or worse, money). And so, on the one hand the medium is not suited to the message. People rightly wonder what the point can be of merely watching the preacher remotely rather than just going to the Church and hearing it in its community context. And on the other hand, the message is often shaped to the demands of an image/entertainment medium, so that the preacher abandons depth to maintain broad commercial interest, and to fit the message into the appropriate time constraints.

In his book, Postman notes four major changes in the way people think due to the advent of the image culture. They are:

1. People can no longer process complex linear arguments.

I would suggest that much of this has to do with an ideological shift and not merely a methodological shift, but certainly both have conspired to undermine linear thought. By that I mean that postmodernism has itself created a culture that celebrates contradiction, relativism and thus sheer randomness of thought. The typical student today has a hundred incompatible ideas swirling about in his head simultaneously, and he will parrot each depending on the context. And he will do this uncritically, in a state of absolute obliviousness to the fact that the idea he argued yesterday discredits the idea he argues today. Now combine this ideological randomness with an audio visual environment pulsating constantly with randomness, and one has all the necessary ingredients for the creation of a culture which is itself wholly without grounding in truth or concern for truth; "driven and tossed by every wind of doctrine," as Paul says. One can see the impact of this by merely considering how few products of the entertainment culture pursue math and the sciences. When was the last time you saw a frat boy pop culture clone working as a physician? When was the last time you met a fashion obsessed young woman working for NASA, or even for a good pharmaceutical company? People must shut off the noise if they are to run deep in anything.

To illustrate this change from an ability to traffic in complex linear argument to the reality of our own time, Postman discusses the Presidential debates of the past and sermons of the past.

In the election battle between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, the two men would debate sometimes for hours on end. And their audience was comprised of mainly blue collar workers, whose capacity for complex argumentation, vocabularies and attention spans are frankly baffling to most of us today. The language of men like Jefferson, Lincoln and even John Muir, if spoken in the typical high school classroom today, would be nearly incomprehensible.

Sermons in Puritan America were at least an hour in length, and often took on the character of literature read aloud. No doubt many of you are familiar with the legends of Jonathan Edwards, the famous Puritan minister in Massachusetts during the first great awakening in the 18th century. It is told that he had a rather severe vision problem and would hold the manuscript of his sermon close to his face and simply read it, occasionally glancing down at his audience to be sure they were still present. He was also a scholar, and not particularly charismatic in his delivery. His sermons were all substance and little style. Try this in any local church today and half the audience will either be passed out or busying themselves on their cell phones. And of course they will be sure that the problem is with the preacher and not them. He would be the one to have "lost touch."

2. The current image-media culture creates an environment that shocks people into a "techno-stupor."

I have students whose attention to varying forms of illuminated screens is almost totally unbroken throughout a typical day. And if they had the choice, some would spend their whole lives interacting with digitized reality rather than people, books, ideas, silence.

Some people today wake up to the screen, look at the screen while driving, while in classes, between classes, while eating lunch with five others also staring at screens, on the way home, at home, and finally the hum of the screen provides a lullaby as they fade into sleep.

Postman suggests that all of this input is too much for us to manage, and so we go into a passive-mind state. Perhaps an illustration is in order. Imagine that someone is shooting puzzle pieces at you machine-gun style, and it is your job to process these pieces and fit them into place. Perhaps at first you make the attempt, but before long it becomes futile. They are coming at far too great a speed for you to do anything meaningful with them. So you cope by standing there and letting them hit you and fall to the ground. Perhaps a few stick to your clothing here and there randomly, but you have given up trying to manage the puzzle pieces to construct some coherent picture.

Reading is a slow and deliberate process which allows one to manage the various pieces of information flowing towards the reader. As such, reading requires an active mind in order to sort and synthesize information. This is in no way required of most image-oriented entertainment media. All one need do is sit there and "receive." A thin smattering of information is retained while a thousand shallow impressions are made. The result is that the knowledge of the child of the image age is a mile wide and an inch deep while the readers knowledge is often deep, but only as wide as deliberately selected.

Ted Coppell put it this way, "How does one explain, or perhaps more relevant, guard against the influence of an industry (popular media) which is on the verge of becoming a hallucinogenic barrage of images, whose only grammar is pacing, whose principal them is energy? We are losing our ability to manage ideas; to contemplate, to think."

3. Many cannot function in abstract thinking because the media requires no meditation on concepts like "beauty," "truth," "deception," and the like.

Plato suggested in his own day that the average man was not concerned with "the forms;" his term for abstract and unchanging principles. For Plato, only the philosopher cares about such things as "the good life," and "justice," and "piety." The average man cares only about his physical safety and his physical appetites. It turns out that Plato had a rather low view of humanity. My question is this: If Plato is right, would the emergence of the image culture move the culture towards a contemplation of the abstract or away from it? It sure seems that the image orientation of our culture does not facilitate abstract thought. Plato's questions to the average man of his own day would be seen as irrelevant to survival and pleasure. Plato's questions in our day are simply not entertaining. In his own day, the average worker walked past Plato because he had no time for philosophical speculation. In our day, the average man has abundant time for Plato, but simply prefers Stephen Colbert. Apparently Plato's image fails to sell among the young American demographic.

If you question Postman's point here, consider a simple question: When the words "success" or "feminine beauty" are raised, do you think of an image or an idea? Have you worked out a philosophy of success or feminine beauty, or do you need not contemplate such things because various images are already assigned to those words--in fact, these images have supplanted any prior definitions for these words. Are you aware of the historical development of these words? Are you aware of the cultural discussions over the meanings of these words? Do you even care? Surely a cursory observation of our culture confirms Postman's point here.

4. Memory is reduced to a cluttered mass of superficial and unrelated pop-culture sound bits.

The great Christian evangelist of the Calvary Chapel movement Greg Laurie put it this way, "We remember the things we ought to forget and forget the things we ought to remember." The typical person in our culture has immediate access to a million trivial pop culture sound bits. He can quote movie lines at will with his buddies. He sings along with his favorite musicians. He is even seen to be witty if he can supply a funny line from a film or TV commercial at the right moment in conversation. But ask this same person to recognize the teachings of Plato, Jesus or even the literature class he just attended, and you will be met with a "deer in the headlights" expression.