I have a new blog. You can find it here. I didn't like the look or title of this one anymore, and I've been wanting to switch to Wordpress for a while. I will keep ChristianThinker.net up a bit longer, if only to keep a record of my ongoing debate with Uncle Skeptic, if he's still out there. =)
Everyone that follows this blog in a feed reader, please update your RSS feeds. That goes for both of you!
I haven't posted in almost 5 months, mainly because I was working on my dissertation during that time. However, the future of this blog is uncertain. I'm currently finishing my Ph.D. at Southern. I'm scheduled to defend my dissertation in two weeks and graduate in May. After that, who knows? I may come back to blogging. I may move the blog. I really don't know right now. Much depends on the next step I take after graduation. For those that have visited this site over the years, I humbly thank you.
And for those wondering, my dissertation is a model of Christian metaethics based on God's Triune nature. It's entitled, "God and Moral Facts: A Trinitarian Realist Model of Christian Metaethics." I may post it here eventually.
Does this [view that science has done away with minor supernatural entities because they play no explanatory role in the world] mean that the progress of the natural sciences has given us equally good measure to deny God's existence? Not necessarily. Scientific progress would supply such reason only if theistic assumptions were in direct competition with naturalistic causal explanations. The reason we shouldn't believe in demiurges and sprites is because they are entities whose existence was to have been vindicated by citing their role in explaining the very phenomena that the natural sciences can now explain better. For most theists, God no longer plays that role. God isn't introduced to explain why a volcano erupted, or a hailstorm destroyed the crops, but instead for a variety of functions (e. g. as the author of the moral law) other than that of actively intervening in earthly affairs so as to continually cause all that occurs in the natural world. That sort of God would be one whose postulated existence would be in direct competition with the causal explanations offered by the natural sciences. But theists needn't take such a view, and so needn't fall prey to the argument that has entitled us to dismiss the minor supernatural characters (leprechauns, trolls, etc.) from our ontology. (114-115)
I'm currently reading through Harry Lee Poe's Christianity in the Academy. Poe, a prof at Union University, tends to make claims about Christian academia that are over-generalized and under-documented, but here and there he makes some very wise observations. Here's one:
Christians build institutions. Usually the result of a movement that emerges from a period of spiritual vitality or awakening, institutions are well intended as a means of carrying on the work or contribution of the genius of that period. It did not work with the monks of Cluny in the early Middle Ages, and it did not work with the YMCA. Spirituality cannot be institutionalized. This observation is central to the problem of maintaining a Christian college or university. If an organization with such a clearly defined purpose as the YMCA can go from being the leading organization for evangelizing young people in America to the largest franchised health club, then one should not expect that a college with such diverse interests can remain Christian for long. Institutions assume the character and agenda of the financial interests that support them.
The recent hubbub about stimulus plans, socialism vs. capitalism, government takeover of corporations, etc. has got me thinking again about the value of the free market. Milton Friedman was one of the most important economists of the twentieth century. Not only did he think very clearly about the virtues of capitalism, he was a master at articulating those virtues. Here he is taking Phil Donahue to economics school in the '80's:
Key quote: "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"
On a related note, one of my new favorite bloggers is the MetaLutheran of CЯЦISIИG DOШИ ТНЕ СОДST OF THE HIGH БДЯБДЯEE. He understands economics much better than me. Here is a great example of one of his posts on our current economic situation.
Update: This is actually from 1979. My good friend Trent Hunter has more videos from this interview, along with some commentary.
Michael Spencer of iMonk fame has asked for responses on a great open thread:
This thread is for this question: How have you resolved the tensions in your own life and thinking between science and your faith? What has been your journey? What was particularly significant in that journey?
I’m especially interested in those who were brought up in conservative Christian environments with typical conservative assumptions about the Bible.
The thread has attracted numerous interesting responses, some from professional scientists. The comments represent numerous perspectives, but almost all of them are from believers who have realized there is no substantive conflict between Christianity and the deliverances of science. Here's a sample from "Theo":
I didn’t encounter much tension between my faith and science growing up. We went to a Baptist church that occasionally taught on creationism and such, but they didn’t really shove it down our throats or make any “you must believe this or else..” sort of statements. My high school AP physics teacher was also the Bible club sponsor. I attended a Christian affiliated university (Baylor) and all my professors were Christian (or at least signed a statement of faith to get their job). So I breezed all the way through college with a masters in physics without ever having really been challenged in my faith as a scientist.
Now I am at a state university working on my Ph.D. My thesis adviser and many people that I work with are openly hostile toward Christianity. It is certainly a more challenging environment, but having known so many Christian scientists (not those kind) has left me with a confidence that I’m not alone in my faith.
Just one observation on the evolution debate. As an experimental physicist, I deal with exact equations and extraordinarily precise, repeatable measurements. All that is required of an evolutionary biologist is the ability to tell a good story (”the shape of the pig’s snout evolved over millions of years to be just the perfect tool to hunt out truffles”, or whatever.) I know they are doing their best with the facts they have available (and there is a bit more to it than just a story), but I find it humorous that it gets equal billing under the single term “science” along with physics or chemistry.
There are some great responses in the thread. I recommend reading through them if you're interested in the relationship between Christianity and science.
It looks like The Evangelical Outpost has relaunched in an online journal format, with multiple contributors and Joe Carter as the Senior Editor. It's good to have you back, Joe. I'll put EO back on my Google Reader feed now.
My friend Charles Juma, a recent Southern grad, does missions in his native Kenya every summer. While Christianity is retreating in the West, it's growing in Africa and other nations due to the work of faithful missionaries like Charles. See his blog for the details on what he's doing this year and how you can support his ministry.
For more on how Christianity is growing in the rest of the world, see here. Numerous studies and books have recently come out detailing how Christianity is growing globally. The latest is God is Back, written by a Catholic and an atheist. The guys at Cadre Comments review and recommend it here.
Mike Almeida at Prosblogion points out Closer to Truth (based on the PBS series), a very well-done website with interviews and videos on "cosmos, consciousness, and God." I'm currently watching an interview with Alva Noe on the mystery of consciousness. Very good stuff.
This video has been very popular on Youtube recently, with over 6 million views:
I've blogged about this before, and this is the drum that conservative commentators like Mark Steyn have been beating for years. However, projecting long-term cultural change from current demographic data is always a tricky business. Cultural and demographic changes are often the results of numerous processes and trends. It's true that fertility rates are a huge factor in projecting these types of cultural changes, maybe even the biggest, but there are other factors to consider. The Network for Strategic Missions has a few quotes up by missions researchers about the video. Hence Jason Mandryk of Operation World:
One element that we cannot possibly accurately estimate (at least I cannot see a mechanism for accurate estimation) is the secularizing effect of European society on immigrants with a religious affiliation and on the children of religion parents . . . Can we have ANY idea about how effective secular materialism will be in converting Muslims, Hindus, non-Western Christians, etc to non-religion? I don’t know, but on an anecdotal basis, the large majority of the Muslims I know in the UK – which would consist of about 40 people, predominantly male and Pakistani and under 35 years old – demonstrate high degrees of nominalism and almost all of the same traits which have seen the exodus of a younger generation from Christianity to non-faith in the last 10-20 years. Many younger Muslims in the UK (and in other Western nations) show the same social values that nominal Christians do - and as great a personal commitment to secular materialism as to their religion - and as such, make for perfectly acceptable and indeed welcomed citizens of a pluralist society.
And Peter Crossing of the World Christian Database questions some of the stats used in the video:
The grain of truth that the Muslim population percentage is increasing in Europe is correct, but WCD projections show Europe overall at 7% by 2050. It may partly be the difference between a straight mathematical extrapolation, and a projection which includes factors that change current growth. (Large growth rates are only sustainable for small populations and inevitably level out as the percentage increases. ie. it’s easy for a population to increase from 20 to 40, but much harder from 20m to 40m).
The base data too, from which the extrapolation is calculated, is very different to WCD:
e.g. Britain Muslims (WCD)
1970: 635,000 1.14%
2010: 1,680,000 2.73%
(as against YouTube’s something like 80,000 in 1970 to 2.5m in 2009–big difference in the extrapolation!)
WCD has 2050: 2,850,000 4.15%
And, by the way, it just seems really unlikely that 1m Muslims in the Netherlands are having the same number of children as 15m non-Muslims. UN says 180,000 births per year, which would mean 90,000 Muslim births. There are 500,000 Muslim females, but say 250,000 at a stretch of child-bearing age–that’s almost every second female giving birth, every year.
If I were a betting man, I'd say the demographic shift described in the video is definitely happening, but not quite at the drastic rates reported. I'll remain skeptical about any supposed certainties that such demographic numbers can deliver about the future. However, it's definitely something to think about. If the numbers about European and American birth rates are even close to correct, then it seems clear that the combination of secularism and affluence is poison to a culture's ability to reproduce itself.
[HT: My mom for the video, Andrew Jackson for the responses of missions researchers]
Brian's note: My Uncle Brad, a religious skeptic, recently asked me to debate issues related to the Christian faith. We decided to have an ongoing public debate here at my blog. This is my latest response to some of his comments on my previous post. You may want to read that post and the comments for more context. My series of posts on Richard Dawkins also comes into play. Here I've put his comments in purple; mine are in black. Feel free to interact in the comments section.
Brian, I looked up the Dawkins’ quote you cited and he clearly directed it to people who, “feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing. . .” In this specific context I’m even more convinced he’s making a very valid point. Here are my responses to your last blog.
I really don't think it makes any difference that he is addressing people who feel "trapped in the religion of your upbringing," whatever that means. I doubt Dawkins would say that his quote doesn't apply to people who don't feel trapped. Likewise, my objections would apply equally to people who do feel trapped in their religion as to people who don't.
Just what sociological questions do you think I’m confusing with what epistemological questions?
I think I've made that clear already, but I'll go over it again. A sociological question is one like, "Why is there a higher percentage of people in Colorado Springs who believe in the divinity of Christ than in Mecca?" To this question we can give sociological answers. "Christianity is the dominant religion practiced in Colorado Springs." "There's an evangelical church on every corner in Colorado Springs and a mosque on every corner in Mecca," etc. An epistemological question is, "Are there good reasons for believing in the divinity of Christ?" To this we can give epistemological answers. "There is good manuscript evidence that Christ claimed to be equal with God, and there is good historical evidence for the Resurrection," etc. If your subject matter is the origin of people's beliefs about Christ's divinity, you can move between sociology and epistemology. But if your subject matter is the truth status of their belief about Christ's divinity, you can't move between sociology and epistemology. That's bad logic. No doubt there are many beliefs that are culturally conditioned and culturally transmitted but that are also true, and that can be known to be true independent of the role they play in the culture.
In the comments section of my last post on a typical silly argument by Richard Dawkins against religious belief, Uncle Skeptic said:
Allowing for some literary license with regard to generality and geography, the Dawkins quote is right on. If we can’t, in general, “judge an individual’s justification for her beliefs by the cultural soup from which those beliefs arise”, then how do you explain the overwhelming correlation between religion and geography? If you look at the geographical distribution of religions, it’s obvious that the vast majority of religious people do, in fact, acquire their religion based on the prevailing cultural soup.
A few points here. First, you are confusing sociological questions with epistemological questions. There are simple sociological reasons why we find high levels of religious uniformity among entire cultures, nations, and races: such uniformity allows for social cohesion, national identity, and a shared set of values. That people often adopt the beliefs of those around them is not new or surprising. Suppose 99% of the people of a culture believe the same thing on a particular religious subject - say, that humans are made in the image of God - and they believe simply because that's what their parents or their culture told them. This fact has exactly zero bearing on whether people actually are made in the image of God or not. As for me, if I'm trying to determine for myself what my view on human nature is, sociological facts about how and why this belief is widely held in my culture are entirely irrelevant. What only matters is whether I have good reasons for accepting it or not, and that is an epistemological question that is independent of sociological ones. If I have a suspicion that I have been duped or "indoctrinated" either for or against this belief, I need only to investigate the matter for myself. Just because a belief is held widely in one particular culture does not automatically make it wrong.
If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam is false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.
Before we take this quote too seriously, we should consider the fact that this is the same Richard Dawkins who claimed that raising a child Catholic is worse than sexually abusing him. Credibility issues aside, what can we make of statements like the one above? This sort of reasoning is very prevalent in the writings of the new atheism of Dawkins, Harris, et al. But this is a typical Dawkinsian non-argument. There is no there there. What is the point of such statements other than to offer intellectual kudos to those who already disbelieve in any particular religion? Consider the following variation on the above quote:
If you were born in Arkansas and you think representative democracy is the best form of government and that Islamic theocracy is the worst, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.
Or how about this one:
If you were born in 1980 and you think the world is round instead of flat, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in 1089, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.
If you can understand the silliness of the two latter statements, you should be able to understand the silliness of the first. You don't necessarily judge an individual's justification for her beliefs by the cultural soup from which those beliefs arise. Consider the following three facts:
(1) I live in a culture where a majority of the people believe Christianity is true. (2) My parents taught me to believe that Christianity is true. (3) I believe that Christianity is true.
And these:
(4) Aziz lives in a culture where a majority of the people believe that Islam is true. (5) Aziz' parents taught him to believe that Islam is true. (6) Aziz believes that Islam is true.
Now, it's obvious that facts (1)-(3) have no bearing on whether Christianity is true or not, just as (4)-(6) have no bearing on whether Islam is true or not. Let's add one more fact to our list:
(7) If I had been born in Aziz' family, I would have believed that Islam was true instead of Christianity.
Dawkins' contention is that if I am aware that facts (1)-(7) are true, then I should conclude that I am a victim of "childhood indoctrination."
But why? The circumstances under which I form a belief are different animals from the reasons I have for holding that belief. I suppose that by Dawkins using this sort of reasoning he means to hold up a simple truism: we shouldn't believe something just because it is widely believed in our own culture. This is obvious, but trivial. Dawkins is attempting to twist this simple truism into some sort of cudgel against religious belief. But just because it is true that some religious people hold their beliefs because they were raised in a religious culture, and because they themselves have not done enough reflection to have good reasons for their beliefs, does not mean that all of them do. And just because some parents indoctrinate and propagandize their children into religious belief does not mean that all of them do. I think most religious parents attempt, to the best of their ability, to give their children good reasons for why they think their religious views are right and others are wrong. That some parents fail miserably at this task is probably a contributor to the apostasy rate of children of religious believers, but that too is a different discussion altogether.
Consider again my above variations on Dawkins' statement. Suppose someone were to use my first hypothetical statement to mock Dawkins for believing that representative democracy is superior to Islamic theocracy. What would his response be? I think he would simply point out that representative democracy is the best form of government for Reason A, Reason B, Reason C, and so forth. If he is justified in doing this, why is the religious believer not justified in doing the same thing? Facts about what someone would believe in a possible world in which they were raised in a different culture are irrelevant to the justification for the beliefs they hold in this, the real world. If we were to adopt this sort of skepticism, then it wouldn't just be religious beliefs that we would have to be skeptical about, but our moral beliefs, our political beliefs, and any other beliefs that fall short of being justified by naked logic or direct experience. Once again, for all his blustering and cuteness, the darling of the new atheists poses no convincing argument against the justification of religious belief. Dawkins always disappoints.
Today markes the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Here is one of the most tragic and revealing videos about the horrors of that day. It is not graphic, but I do not advise you to watch it if seeing real-life tragedies upsets you.
For more on the identity of one of the jumpers, see here.
While rearranging books today, I opened my copy of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy to a passage where he discusses what we would associate today with New Age thought. There I found this remarkable quote:
Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
Is there a Christian writer alive today who writes with such clarity and common sense? If there is, I am not aware of him.
Rodney Dunning of Very Important Stuff has been on an anti-Southern Baptist crusade recently, and I've been reading what he's had to say with an interested but cynical eye. One of his recent posts demands more than a mere reading, however. Unfortunately, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and slanderous caricatures of one's theological opponents are nothing new to the "debate" between theological liberals and conservatives, but this attack on Southern Seminary, an institution with which I have been affiliated for the last seven years, surpasses the normal liberal-conservative sniping that goes on in the theological blogosphere. It borders on, for lack of a better term, institutional defamation.
Dunning links to an article in Ethics Daily, a theologically liberal cultural journal that generally speaks of conservative Southern Baptists as if they were the hand-picked agents of Satan on earth. The article, by one Pastor Keith Herron, throws some remarkable and strongly-worded accusations at Southern Seminary. The interesting thing is that Herron offers virtually no evidence in support of these accusations and, as someone intimately associated with the institution, its faculty, and its students, I can safely say that Herron's accusations are nakedly false. They are not only false and unfounded, but Herron (and Dunning, by proxy) turns them into weapons designed to damage the seminary's reputation among Christians, and that I cannot tolerate. The seminary and its officials have publicly taken positions in the past with which I have strongly disagreed, but I love Southern for its gospel-centeredness, its theological convictions, its unyielding pursuit of academic integrity, and for the ridiculously high quality of people that work and attend there.
No, I'm not dead. Neither am I incapacitated, unmotivated, or otherwise incapable of blogging. The simple reason for my absence is this: I used to blog during downtime at work. I was promoted in February, and now I have no downtime at work. I want to keep blogging on a regular basis, but I just haven't quite figured out how to do it. To prove my sincerity in this matter, I offer this, an actual post.
Most of you are aware that the unsettling web hegemon known as Google has a Books section wherein the Google masters want to digitize as many books known to man as possible. For practical purposes many of these books are largely worthless, since most are copyrighted and you can only view a few pages. But many of the books have copyrights that have expired (I assume), so Google offers them for free viewing and as downloadable PDFs. The majority of these are older books from previous centuries, and this means that many classic philosophical and theological works are there for the taking. Here I offer downloadable links to some of these that I recently found while browsing through Google Books. Just click and save:
It greatly saddens me tonight to hear that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at age 90. If you, like me, have a robust notion of the Reformed doctrine of common grace, then I think it is safe to say that the cup of such grace was overflowing in Clarke's life. He was a prophet of the imagination, a man whose sole joy in life was to drink the wine of the beauty and mystery of the cosmos, and to share that draught with the rest of humanity. I have not read the majority of his over 100 books, but his major works affected me with a strange force that I can still feel to this day. Books like Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End are examples of Clarke's most visionary and inspiring work, and those who are not too uppity to read paperback science fiction will tell you that Clarke raised the medium to new heights. Some might even call it art.
Unlike more "literary" authors, Clarke was not obsessed with the human condition, but with the vast universe with which the human condition must contend. I do not know much about his religious views, but in my mind he was always a naturalist, albeit a naturalist who, like Carl Sagan, looked to the stars for mankind's salvation. He held a lifelong awe at the universe that could almost be called religious. Clarke found a deep and abiding beauty in the mysteries of creation, and when reading him I always got the sense that he regretted being born in what he considered the infancy of human progress. He envisioned futures where men stretched out across the stars, found wonders and terrors there, and ultimately realized that they were at the mercy of greater powers than themselves. But, unlike Sagan, I do not know that Clarke was ever overtly hostile to Christianity. It's true that in some of his books one can detect subtle arguments for atheism, but Clarke was also friends with C. S. Lewis and wrote stories with religious themes. At any rate, he is one of the few members of the human race worthy to bear the overused title of "visionary." He determined how orbital satellites could work decades before they actually did. The most recent novel of Clarke's that I had the pleasure of reading was The Fountains of Paradise, which tells the story of the world's first space elevator. Clarke later wrote an interesting article detailing the challenges and possibilities of building a real space elevator. The idea sounds silly when you first think of it, but contemporary scientists take the idea very seriously and, just as it was with satellites, one day the strange possibility that Clarke envisioned could become a reality.
Clarke will be missed. He was a giant of the human imagination. For Christians interested in how Clarke interacted with Christianity and theism, you might want to pick up the recent volume of his collected short stories and read "The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God."
I think there is a natural tendency in most people to let affluence and privilege weaken their character. Hence I have to say that I am greatly impressed with the news today that Prince Harry has been on duty in Afghanistan since late December. Harry's status in life represents the pinnacle of human privilege: not only are all his material needs met, he has the additional advantage of being a member of the near-mythological British royal family. He has the adulation of the British masses (despite some of his youthful faux pas), and he could literally pick from a thousand wonderful futures for himself.
Yet he volunteers for the military, and apparently jockeys heavily for a position on the front lines of combat. Contrast this selfless and courageous behavior with the vapid wanderings of that other child of privilege whose worthless doings are plastered all over the media for no apparent reason. I salute you, Harry. This decision shows there is potential greatness in you, and I for one hope that potential is fulfilled.
Also, for those interested in that sort of thing, in most of the images that have been released Harry is using an SA-80 assault rifle, an old 5.56 mm standby for British forces. But there are some who say the Brits need an update.
Here is a fascinating article by Bob Geldof about his time spent with President Bush in Africa. Geldof is a reasonable liberal: he is strongly opposed to the Iraq War but he does not think Bush is evil. He recognizes the good the president has done in the world, even if he holds a fierce opposition to the war. Here is a lesson in wisdom: be charitable to those with whom you disagree, even if you believe they are doing great harm to the world. Do not turn them into a villain in your eyes unless you have no other option. This is a simple principle of prudence that seems impossible for millions of ideologically-blinded Americans to recognize.
Since my last post was (somewhat) about politics, I thought I'd keep the political train moving along here at ChristianThinker.net. Reuters has a story about how much adulation George W. Bush has received on his recent trip to Africa:
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete poured praise on Bush in Dar es Salaam on Sunday, the second day of his five-nation African tour, each compliment applauded warmly by members of the east African country's cabinet ...
Kikwete told Bush: "The outpouring of warmth and affection from the people of Tanzania that you have witnessed since your arrival is a genuine reflection of what we feel towards you and towards the American people."
In a reference to Bush's domestic problems, Kikwete added: "Different people may have different views about you and your administration and your legacy.
"But we in Tanzania, if we are to speak for ourselves and for Africa, we know for sure that you, Mr. President, and your administration have been good friends of our country and have been good friends of Africa."
Although many Africans, especially Muslims, share negative perceptions of Bush's foreign policy with other parts of the world, there is widespread recognition of his successful humanitarian and health initiatives on the continent.
Bush has spent more money on aid to Africa than his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and is popular for his personal programs to fight AIDS and malaria and to help hospitals and schools ...
Because of the U.S. anti-malaria program, 5 percent of patients tested positive for the disease on the offshore islands of Zanzibar in 2007 compared to 40 percent three years earlier, the Tanzanian leader said.
Bush's legacy in Africa would be saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of mothers and children who would otherwise have died from malaria or AIDS and enabling millions of people to get an education, he said.
"I know you leave office in about 12 months' time. Rest assured that you will be remembered for many generations to come for the good things you've done for Tanzania and the good things you have done for Africa," Kikwete said.
Now wait just a minute! Whenever I read the geniuses at The Huffington Post or Daily Kos, all I hear is that conservatives are selfish, warmongering, fascist, theocratic capitalists who oppress the poor, hate non-whites, and don't give a flip about third world countries. Oh, and by the way, the rest of the world hates us because of George W. Bush!
Apparently not. I've had my problems with the presidency of Bush 43. I voted for him twice, but I've become a bit disillusioned with some of his decisions. Mismanagement of the war, bad picks for senior leadership positions, and a balloon in federal spending during his tenure have contributed to my current Bush malaise. But my biggest beef with ol' W. is the starting of an extremely expensive and deadly conflict that, in hindsight, seems entirely unnecessary.
Still, I am willing to let history judge the merits of the Iraq War. And there are things about Bush that I admire. Whatever his vociferous and rabid detractors may say about him, he is not evil. Neither is he Hitler, a fascist, a theocrat, a liar, or an unthinking ignoramus. He is, by many accounts, a man who has a singular moral vision for the world, a man who - although making mistakes along the way - has set his gaze toward the achievement of that vision in the face of a monstrous and well-organized opposition. It should be clear by now that Bush takes his responsibility as the most powerful man in the world very seriously. His decision to invade Iraq was not due to some geopolitical ambition to expand America's "empire," and neither was it to bolster the bottom line of the oil companies. I think that he firmly believed then (and now) that it was the best thing for the world that the regime of Saddam Hussein be dismantled.
We are now in the last year of the Bush presidency. I can only hope that history will judge him more kindly than the American mob is now judging him. I also hope that, when he lies on his death bed weighing the merits of his life, he will not see the angry faces of those uncharitable fools who suffer from the worst cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I hope rather that he sees the smiling faces of the Tanzanian people, thanking him for making their world a better place.
I generally refrain from posting on issues relating to politics or the media on this blog, but some stories are just too odious to ignore. Breitbart ran this piece from the Agence France-Presse. The story portrays itself as an objective report about the U. S. military, but in reality it is little more than a cleverly-constructed theological hit piece. The premise is that there are individuals in the U. S. Armed Forces who feel they have suffered religious discrimination from some overzealous evangelical officers:
Since his last combat deployment in Iraq, Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall.
"A senior ranking staff sergeant told me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," Hall, a 23-year-old US army specialist, told AFP.
Later, Hall was confronted by a major for holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment.
I have no doubt that there are instances of this sort of bad behavior on the part of Christians. Every socio-political-religious group has its fools. The Christian church has them, so do the Muslims, as well as the atheists. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that you could even find a few Unitarians who like to bust heads every now and then. No group is comprised of flawless members, and hence this is not controversial. In an organization as large as the United States Armed Forces (about 2.9 million strong), it is not surprising to find all sorts of unacceptable behavior, even among Christians.
The story portrays this to be a widespread phenomenon. For example, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation claims to have 6,800 accounts of this sort of abuse at the hands of Christians in the military. The MRFF and some of the offended soldiers that are quoted in the piece seem to think that a military coup by evangelical soldiers is close at hand. But a Pentagon spokesperson says that there have been only 100 formal complaints about religious harassment filed over the past two years. Let's crunch the numbers here. If the higher number is correct (and I do not concede for a moment that it is), then of the 2.88 million members of the U. S. military, less than a quarter of 1 percent of them have suffered harassment at the hands of these dastardly fundamentalists. If the lower number is correct, then it's about .0035 percent. You will forgive me if I find incendiary remarks drumming up fears about those who want to "create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy" in the military a bit hyperbolic. Perhaps the MRFF has been studying the Joe McCarthy playbook.
But the AFP story holds its cards until the very last sentence. The unnamed journalist interviews a former chaplain who says he was harassed for not towing a certain theological line. The final quote belongs to the anonymous chaplain:
"As a soldier, many times you want to believe you're fighting on the right side. It's easy to kill someone if you believe that they're going to hell and that they are religiously opposed to you."
Of course! If you hold to the exclusivity of salvation through Christ, you may become a murderer! I'm sure all the evangelicals in the military are constantly engaged in a vicious internal battle, struggling to will themselves not to cut the throats of their unbelieving comrades in their sleep.
I do not give the AFP a pass on this issue simply because the quote comes from a source that was interviewed and not the actual author of the story, just as I would not give them a pass if they were to give the final word to someone who said that holding Jewish beliefs might cause someone to want to drink human blood. That this statement would even be quoted is unconscionable, and it only serves as an illustration of the schizophrenia that surrounds the notion of "tolerance" in contemporary western culture. To the anonymous former chaplain (and to the AFP) I would say: you do not show the dangers of religious intolerance by making equally egregious and inflammatory statements about the beliefs of evangelicals. That's like trying to spread the virtues of pacifism by randomly kicking people in the groin.
Therefore, those who have no experience of reason or virtue, but are always occupied with feasts and the like, are brought down and then back up to the middle, as it seems, and wander in this way throughout their lives, never reaching beyond this to what is truly higher up, never looking up at it or being brought up to it, and so they aren't filled with that which really is and never taste any stable or pure pleasure. Instead, they always look down at the ground like cattle, and, with their heads bent over the dinner table, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. To outdo others in these things, they kick and butt them with iron horns and hooves, killing each other, because their desires are insatiable. For the part that they're trying to fill is like a vessel full of holes, and neither it nor the things they are trying to fill it with are among the things that are.
- Socrates, in Plato, The Republic, Book IX, translated by G. M. A. Grube
In other words, it's better to spend your life seeking the true, the beautiful, and the good, than wasting it by merely indulging the flesh. Here's a pictorial representation:
I've updated the "Reading List" section on the right with some of the books I'm reading this semester. When will I get back to blogging? It's hard to say, since the amount of free time I can devote to the blogosphere seems to be less and less. Hopefully soon, however, since I have quite a few topics I'd like to discuss. Heck, the Lost Season 4 premiere was last night and I'm not even sure I'll be able to post on that. Times are hectic.
Michael Mann is one of my favorite directors. The musical score from his The Last of the Mohicans is one of my all-time favorite film scores. Football is my favorite sport. As I was watching a recent NFL game I saw this Nike ad, which combines all three of these things. Needless to say, it very much warmed my heart.
Regular posting is to resume shortly here at ChristianThinker.net, but in the meantime, does anyone know what happened to Prosthesis? I liked that guy.
Just a note for anyone who might be interested: I'll be preaching in the morning service this Sunday at First Baptist Church of Sheffield, Alabama. My text is Isaiah 8:1-9:7 and the title of my message is, "Incarnation and Indignation: A Happy Little Christmas Story About God's Wrath and Messianic Deliverance."
I have only one comment here: if there were a Wikipedia entry for Awesomeness, it would certainly contain nothing but a direct link to this trailer. For a version far superior to the pixelated YouTube trash above, go here.
I apologize for the dearth of new posts here in the past month. Since the semester finished up I've been enjoying some (or, perhaps, too much) relaxation time. I hope to dive back into some meaty topics in the New Year. In the interim, I offer a few links of interest:
Huckabashing. I visit the Drudge Report daily, but Drudge's recent string of Huck-bashing is starting to stick in my craw. RealClearPolitics says this is because Drudge is closely aligned with the Romney camp. I haven't decided who I'm supporting yet, but this just irks me. See also here.
An insignificant achievement. And now for some meaningless tooting of my own horn. I recently accomplished an elusive feat in Halo 3: a perfect game. Here are the stats for the game. My Gamertag is TheHeroicIdeal.
Feminine Appeal. Ladies, my wife has been posting about the results of using Carolyn Mahaney's Feminine Appeal in a women's Bible study. The posts are here , here, here, here, here, and here.
Her conclusion: this book is so awesome that it makes you feel bad.
Six degrees of Mr. Tumnus. Apparently C. S. Lewis had a few encounters with T. E. Lawrence at Oxford. As anyone who knows me well can attest (probably only my wife), Lewis and Lawrence are two heroes of mine, but for entirely different reasons. I admire Lewis for his mind and his wit, but Lawrence for his leadership ability. Here is an interesting bit of trivia: Lawrence was also a hero of Frank Herbert's. Herbert famously modeled Paul Atreides, the protagonist in his classic sci-fi novel Dune, on Lawrence. In the sequels to the original novels, the role of protagonist passed to Paul's more powerful son, Leto Atreides II. In recent film adaptations, both Leto Atreides and Lewis' inimitable faun Mr. Tumnus (from the Narnia series) were played by Scottish actor James McAvoy. [HT: Brandon]
Secret project. A good chunk of my time recently has been spent working on a sequel to this, which, incidentally, uses music from the Children of Dune miniseries.
Pat Robertson to endorse Giuliani. This news is interesting in itself, but I link to the Washington Post blog above just to highlight the stinking, squalid sewer that makes up contemporary political discourse. Here are a few of the comments aimed at Christian conservatives from their compassionate progressive opponents:
"Oh well, you just lost my potential vote Giuliani!! Having support from Religious [sic] psychopaths like Robertson will hurt your credibility, not help it!!!"
"Blind sheep,(evangelical rank and file) led by deaf goats,(televangelists) owned by hungry wolves (Guiliani) [sic] ..."
"...KICK THE REPUBLICAN'S SOFT TEETH DOWN THEIR WHINEY THROATS!"
"My first inclination is to laugh in the faces of every social conservative who votes for Rudy because of their lack of principles and blatant hypocracy [sic]. However, on further reflection, I believe I'll spit in their faces given the damage the religious right has brought about with its narrow worldview and blind obedience to one failed president and now its support for another."
"Robertson is precisely the kind of Republican extremist nutjob that Guiliani is trying to exploit. Self-conceited, boundlessly hypocritical, manipulative and irrationally fearful hatemongers are Bush's core supporters. They are the lunatic fringe of society still blindly backing the dishonesties, incompetencies and failures of their looney tunes caricature of an embarrassingly dysfunctional, destructive, deadly and shamelessly remorseless immoral president. All they want to do is perpetuate Bush's insanity, and Guiliani is willing to provide them that hope if it will help him get elected."
"White House Spiritual Leader Pastor Ted Haggard also endorsed Giuliani today at a SunCruz prayer breakfast. While sucking down a breakfast sausage, Pastor Ted pointed out "these Regent University grads now running our government have been successful in making America feared around the world, and most of all at home. They never stop thinking of new ways to harm our country and our people. And neither do we." He added, "Amen. There are still American citizens who have not yet been burglarized and beaten by Blackwater-type covert Republican forces. We will not be satisfied until the evangelical special forces burglarizes every American home and all those Americans standing up for freedom and liberty are disappeared by secret rendition."
And here's one just to show that I'm not impartial when it comes to criticizing political filth-spewers: "To all you left liberal jerk offs may Jihad remove your empty heads first---"
And I assure you, this type of language is tame compared to comments often made by some of the wolves that frequent sites like the Huffington Post or Daily Kos (and yes, I know there are conservatives that do it too). But then again, this is the internet, so perhaps a sanitized term like "political discourse" doesn't apply. What will we do about this situation? I can only think of that piece of wisdom an officer in Vietnam gave to a green private about life in that miserable conflict: "Vietnam is like a sea of $h!t. Some people sink, some people swim, and some go on boats."
UPDATE: Of course it isn't just faceless web trolls who like to splash in the sewer. Newspaper columnists do it too, as John at Verum Serum points out this morning.
My friend Charles Juma, a recent Southern grad, does missions in his native Kenya every summer. While Christianity is retreating in the West, it's growing in Africa and other nations due to the work of faithful missionaries like Charles. See his blog for the details on what he's doing this year and how you can support his ministry.
Rodney Dunning of Very Important Stuff has been on an anti-Southern Baptist crusade recently, and I've been reading what he's had to say with an interested but cynical eye. One of his recent posts demands more than a mere reading, however. Unfortunately, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and slanderous caricatures of one's theological opponents are nothing new to the "debate" between theological liberals and conservatives, but this attack on Southern Seminary, an institution with which I have been affiliated for the last seven years, surpasses the normal liberal-conservative sniping that goes on in the theological blogosphere. It borders on, for lack of a better term, institutional defamation. 
It greatly saddens me tonight to hear that Sir Arthur C. Clarke has passed away at age 90. If you, like me, have a robust notion of the Reformed doctrine of common grace, then I think it is safe to say that the cup of such grace was overflowing in Clarke's life. He was a prophet of the imagination, a man whose sole joy in life was to drink the wine of the beauty and mystery of the cosmos, and to share that draught with the rest of humanity. I have not read the majority of his over 100 books, but his major works affected me with a strange force that I can still feel to this day. Books like Rendezvous with Rama and Childhood's End are examples of Clarke's most visionary and inspiring work, and those who are not too uppity to read paperback science fiction will tell you that Clarke raised the medium to new heights. Some might even call it art. 
I think there is a natural tendency in most people to let affluence and privilege weaken their character. Hence I have to say that I am greatly impressed with the news today that Prince Harry has been on duty in Afghanistan since late December. Harry's status in life represents the pinnacle of human privilege: not only are all his material needs met, he has the additional advantage of being a member of the near-mythological British royal family. He has the adulation of the British masses (despite some of his youthful faux pas), and he could literally pick from a thousand wonderful futures for himself.
Since my last post was (somewhat) about politics, I thought I'd keep the political train moving along here at ChristianThinker.net. Reuters has a story about how much adulation George W. Bush has received on his recent trip to Africa:
I generally refrain from posting on issues relating to politics or the media on this blog, but some stories are just too odious to ignore. Breitbart ran this piece from the Agence France-Presse. The story portrays itself as an objective report about the U. S. military, but in reality it is little more than a cleverly-constructed theological hit piece. The premise is that there are individuals in the U. S. Armed Forces who feel they have suffered religious discrimination from some overzealous evangelical officers:
