1. Peter Augustine Lawler, one of the most underrated public intellectuals in America, has an intriguing editorial about religion and politicians titled, "The Candidate’s Religion":
Religious appeals in American politics have generally been most effective when combined with appeals to constitutional principles that Americans share in common. Remember Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They both displayed themselves as Christian leaders, but in ways that harmonized their personal faith with the providential, natural, judgmental God of our Declaration of Independence. Neither King nor Lincoln believed that his religion was just window-dressing for his political teaching: The moral impetus for overcoming injustice depends upon a God who secures our rights better than we can all on our own. It’s very doubtful that men and women without any personal faith at all can really devote themselves to the proposition that all men are created equal. That’s one reason, among many, that we’ve never had a president who proclaimed himself an atheist, or who never acknowledged our nation’s gratitude to God.
2. Michael Patton ponders the question "Are All Sins Really Equal in God’s Sight?":
I don’t believe that all sin is equal in God’s sight. I also believe that telling people that it is does great damage to the character of God and the seriousness of certain sins….
I think that it is safe to say that while not all people sin to the same degree, we all share in an equally depraved nature. In other words, no one is less of a sinner because of an innate righteousness about which they can boast. All people have equal potential for depravity because we are all sons of Adam and share in the same depravity, even if we don’t, due to God’s grace, act out our sinfulness to the same degree.
(HT: Stand to Reason Blog)
3. Frank James of the Chicago Tribune notices that exit polls don't ask Democrats if they're evangelicals:
Here's a problem with the entrance and exit polls that has gone under the radar. Not the kind that had anything to do with the screwy polling in last night's New Hampshire Primary but certainly one that needs fixing. Pollsters apparently aren't asking Democrats if they self-identify as evangelicals.
They ask the question of Republicans but not Democrats, even though there are many evangelical Democrats. Maybe not as many as Republicans but they do exist in some numbers.
Pollsters may be harboring a stereotype of evangelicals as entirely Republicans and thus dismissing the need to ask the question of Democrats. But it's definitely a question they should add to their surveys.
4. How to be a writer in 20 years or more (HT: WORLD blog)
5. During a discussion on donor conception in the British House of Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool revealed that a pair of twins who had been separated at birth learned they were related only after they had become husband and wife:
"They were never told that they were twins," he said during the Dec. 10 debate on a law covering human fertility and embryology. They had been adopted by separate families and "met later in life and felt an inevitable attraction, and the judge had to deal with the consequences of the marriage that they entered into and all the issues of their separation."
6. Quote of the Week: "The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." -- novelist Harlan Ellison (HT: Neatorama)
7. A Thinking Reed on Zoos:
I’m against ‘em, basically. Any practical benefit they serve (education, entertainment, scientific research, species conservation) can be provided in other ways that don’t infringe the natural liberty and well-being of wild animals. I mean, I’m not fanatical about it, and there are plenty of other more pressing issues, but I think it’s a practice that’s pretty hard to justify.
While I had never given it much thought, I think that is exactly the right position to have and one that I myself will adopt.
8. The Mises Institute lists Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies, 1774–2004
Myth #8: Business Corporations Favor a Policy of Laissez-Faire
Never in the history of our country have corporations, Wall Street financiers, bond holders, and other large capitalists, as a class or interest, favored a policy of economic liberty and nonintervention by government. They have always favored some form of mercantilism. It is surely significant that the second Republican Party, founded in Michigan in 1854, was funded and led by men who wished to overthrow the libertarian desideratum of the 1840s and 50s.
(HT: Kottke.org)
9. Dr. Robert George of Princeton talks about his new book Embryo, co-authored with Christopher Tollefsen:
"[A]t all stages of our lives - from the embryonic through the fetal, infant, child, and adolescent stages and into adulthood - we are human beings with dignity and the right to life. Our dignity does not come from having achieved a certain level of intellectual proficiency or even conscious awareness. … We have our dignity in virtue of the kind of entity we are: that is human being, a creature with a rational nature. And we became that when we came to be."
(HT: Stand to Reason Blog)
10. In a balanced article on "The Micromagic of Microcredit", Karol Boudreaux and Tyler Cowen include this interesting section on where the poor keep their wealth:
Sometimes microcredit leads to more savings rather than more debt. That sounds paradoxical, but borrowing in one asset can be a path toward (more efficient) saving in other assets.
To better understand this puzzle, we must set aside some of our preconceptions about how saving operates in poor countries, most of all in rural areas. Westerners typically save in the form of money or money-denominated assets such as stocks and bonds. But in poor communities, money is often an ineffective medium for savings; if you want to know how much net saving is going on, don’t look at money. Banks may be a daylong bus ride away or may be plagued, as in Ghana, by fraud. A cash hoard kept at home can be lost, stolen, taken by the taxman, damaged by floods, or even eaten by rats. It creates other kinds of problems as well. Needy friends and relatives knock on the door and ask for aid. In small communities it is often very hard, even impossible, to say no, especially if you have the cash on hand….
Under these kinds of conditions, a cow (or a goat or pig) is a much better medium for saving. It is sturdier than paper money. Friends and relatives can’t ask for small pieces of it. If you own a cow, it yields milk, it can plow the fields, it produces dung that can be used as fuel or fertilizer, and in a pinch it can be slaughtered and turned into saleable meat or simply eaten. With a small loan, people in rural areas can buy that cow and use cash that might otherwise be diverted to less useful purposes to pay back the microcredit institution. So even when microcredit looks like indebtedness, savings are going up rather than down.
Microcredit won't solve global poverty, of course, but I think these are foreign-aid programs that American conservatives should embrace. It’s a small way to encourage entrepreneurship and hard work--two essential elements that will help solve the poverty crisis.
(HT: Reason's Hit & Run)
11. Top 8 Most Amazing Tree Houses (HT: Neatorama)
12. David Kuo found some intriguing statistics in a study put out by Lifeway research:
- 78% of the "unchurched" said they would be interested in hearing more about Christianity from someone.
- When asked whether Christians they knew talked about their faith too much 71% disagreed.
These answers beg the question of whether Christians are talking about their faith enough. I would have guessed the answers to these questions would have been radically different based on both personal experience and conventional wisdom about Christians. The stereotype of evangelicals is that they are walking around ready to smack unsuspecting people left and right with their Bibles; that Christians live only to annoy their neighbors with their incessant evangelism.
All of this begs the question of whether Christians are embarrassed by Jesus.
Yes, I think we are.
13. Theodore Dalrymple on addiction:
Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not a serious medical condition but a relatively trivial experience, and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality.
From " Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bueaucracy" via Maverick Philosopher
14. From the abstract of the economics paper An Empirical Analysis of Street-Level Prostitution by Steven D. Levitt and Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh:
Combining transaction-level data on street prostitutes with ethnographic observation and official police force data, we analyze the economics of prostitution in Chicago. Prostitution, because it is a market, is much more geographically concentrated than other criminal activity. Street prostitutes earn roughly $25-$30 per hour, roughly four times their hourly wage in other activities, but this higher wage represents relatively meager compensation for the significant risk they bear. Prostitution activities are organized very differently across neighborhoods. Where pimps are active, prostitutes appear to do better, with pimps both providing protection and paying efficiency wages. Condoms are used only one-fourth of the time and the price premium for unprotected sex is small. The supply of prostitutes is relatively elastic, as evidenced by the supply response to a 4th of July demand shock. Although technically illegal, punishments are minimal for prostitutes and johns. A prostitute is more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one. We estimate that there are 4,400 street prostitutes active in Chicago in an average week.
15. French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche on reasonable and unreasonable reasons:
When a man values the life of his horse more than the life of his coachman, he has his reasons for doing so; but they are particular reasons that every reasonable man abhors. They are reasons that at bottom are unreasonable, because they do not conform with Sovereign Reason, or the Universal Reason, that all men consult.
(HT: Siris)
16. Mohamed Jaisham, a 15-year-old Boy Scout, recently saved the life of the Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Maldives :
The attacker had wrapped a kitchen knife in the national flag of the Maldives and launched his attack as President Gayoom greeted supporters at the opening of a renewable energy project.
However, Mohamed, wearing the characteristic green Scout uniform with scarf and woggle, lived up to the Scout motto of “Be Prepared”. He stepped between the knifeman and President Gayoom, suffering an injury to his hand in the ensuing scuffle. The President was unharmed, although the knife ripped his shirt.
That should be enough to earn him the "Lifesaving" merit badge. (HT: Neatorama)
17. How France and Germany educate Children to hate Capitalism
In France and Germany, students are being forced to undergo a dangerous indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias. Rooting it out may determine whether Europe’s economies prosper or continue to be left behind.
18. Mark Byron on Al Mohler, "Baptist Public Intellectual":
The interesting thing about Mohler is that he's a blogger; many of the contentious items that were featured in the Herald Leader piece, like a though experiment about genetically modifying a child in utereo that had genetic tendencies that would lean it towards being homosexual, flowed from blog entries where he (as the Herald Leader puts it) comments "on moral, cultural and theological issues."
That kind of fits the description of the old-school public intellectual; no, a Baptist public intellectual isn't an oxymoron. It doesn't fit the description of the megachurch (or near-megachurch; if you have one service on Sunday, you're not going to be in the hunt) pastor that normally gets the gig of running a denomination, nor does it sound like your stereotypical tight-sphinctered seminary chief.
Mark is right, which is why I think Mohler will be more influential if he does not become the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
19. 10 Steps to Become an Email Ninja
20. Havard professor Steven Pinker wonders "Is Morality a Figment?"
Here is the worry. The scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world. The qualitative difference between red and green, the tastiness of fruit and foulness of carrion, the scariness of heights and prettiness of flowers are design features of our common nervous system, and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes, our reactions could go the other way. Now, if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring, why should we believe it is any more real than the distinction between red and green? And if it is just a collective hallucination, how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone, rather than just distasteful to us?
The short answer is that if morality is just hard-wired into our brains then "good and evil" really are no less subjective than "red and green." (HT: Vox Popli)
21. Patrick Deneen on the nanny-state and libertarianism:
Living long lives becomes the sine qua non of modern liberal polities. "Morals" legislation becomes impermissible in favor of legislation that prevents actions that would shorten our lives. While initially a ban on harm committed by some against the physical well being of others, the logic of self-preservation and the avoidance of physical harm ultimately extends to preventing the ignorant from harming themselves. Paternalistic laws forcing people to be healthy are a logical outcome of a certain life-obsessed libertarianism.
(HT: Maggie's Farm)
22. Bret Stephens on Great (American) Expectations:
When foreigners assail Americans for being naïve, it is often on account of contrasts like these. A nation in which the poor are defined by an income level that in most countries would make them prosperous is a nation that has all but forgotten the true meaning of poverty. A nation in which obesity is largely a problem of the poor (and anorexia of the upper-middle class) does not understand the word "hunger." A nation in which the most celebrated recent cases of racism, at Duke University or in Jena, La., are wholly or mostly contrived is not a racist nation. A nation in which our "division" is defined by the vitriol of Ann Coulter or James Carville is not a truly divided one--at least while Mr. Carville is married to Republican operative Mary Matalin and Ms. Coulter is romantically linked with New York City Democrat Andrew Stein.
(HT: Campaign Standard)
23. Zippy Catholic argues that Single People and Women Should Receive Less Pay For Equivalent Work:
Treating people as things is where most evil starts, and employees are real people not things. As real people employees have human natures, and human nature isn't Kantian universalism or Nietzschean will-to-power or whatever: human nature is social, human beings are raised by mothers and fathers in families, and not everyone is a father at all let alone is everyone equally a father all at the same time. To hire a father is to hire a person who has primary responsibility for materially providing for his family; such a hiring is a different kind of thing from hiring a teenager to mow the lawn or hiring an older mother with an empty nest looking for some extra cash to spend on the grandkids.
Employment as an institution which treats a father of five as a fungible productivity unit equivalent to a bachelor, or a single woman, or even a wife and mother, is a deliberate institutionalization of inhumanity. Deliberate institutionalization of inhumanity is a moral evil, so the institutionalization of equal pay for equal work is immoral.
(HT: Pseudo-Polymath)
24. Joseph Knippenberg on the differences between the religious right and religious left:
I'd state the difference between "Christian 'Right'" and "Christian Left" this way: the former are conservative in the sense that they wish to restore a family- and church-centered ideal, which they regard as under assault and having been eroded by the assault; the latter wish to create something historically unprecedented, at most inspired by a vision of "Godly" community. For the former, government can protect these "natural" or "God-ordained" institutions, which are the locus of human responsibility and the seats of charity. For the latter, government is the instrument of "inspired" individual responsibility and charity, remaking or transforming institutions to suit the vision, which is itself universalistic.
Because it insists upon the importance of family and church, religious conservatism isn't really "individualistic." Because it regards all communal arrangements--other than the brotherhood (siblinghood?) of mankind (humankind?)--as matter of choice undertaken by individuals, "liberated" and transformed by government, religious liberalism is, in an attenuated sense, "individualistic."
25. LOLCat of the Week
moar funny pictures
26. Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides makes an important distinction between love and the love story:
Love stories depend upon disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.
(HT: Very Short List)
27. Survey: Churchgoers, Married Adults Most Likely to be Happy
Most Americans are “very satisfied” and “very happy” with their personal lives, according to a recent national poll.
Those who attend church weekly, married adults, those in higher income households, whites, and Republicans are most likely to say they are currently satisfied and happy with their lives, according to the Gallup Poll.
Being a white, Republican, married adult who attends church weekly and has a high income (well, higher than when I lived in a trailer park and ate cans of Vienna sausages) I would say that is about right. I am very happy and very satisfied with my life.
28. Big retail chains such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot have disaster warning, relief, and recovery that tend to be larger, and far more efficient, than those of run by municipal governments:
In cases of extreme weather and natural disasters, some of the nation's largest retailers now behave like municipalities -- sometimes better.
Spurred by the Sept. 11 terror attacks and rough hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005, more retailers have created specialized divisions -- or hired outside firms -- to gird for emergencies. The goal: to speed recovery for customers, employees and ultimately sales.
It's a measure of the times.
Mega-retailers going global with huge distribution networks face more frequent and varied disasters. Yet as leaders in the business of moving goods and information -- Wal-Mart's famous for daily crack-of-dawn conference calls detailing real-time sales -- some have found they can react more quickly than local governments. For them, disasters have become just another cost of doing business.
(HT: No Left Turns)
29. Philosophical Myths: Kierkegaard never talked about the "leap of faith." (HT: Siris)
30. Do you understand the reality of entrepreneurship or do you believe the myths? Take the Entrepreneurship Test to find out. (I scored a measly 45%) (HT: How to Change the World)
31. Know your geography? Take the Traveler IQ Challenge game to find out.
32. Four Health Behaviors Can Add 14 Extra Years Of Life -- People who adopt four healthy behaviours -- not smoking; taking exercise; moderate alcohol intake; and eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day -- live on average an additional fourteen years of life compared with people who adopt none of these behaviours, according to a new study.
33. Greg Koukl explains the proper way to understand a Christian, biblical concept of "faith."
To #9:
Indeed for us murder is forbidden once and for all, so it is not permitted even to destroy what is conceived in the womb. To prohibit the birth of a child is only a faster way to murder; it makes little difference whether one destroys a life already born or prevents it from coming to birth. It is a human being, who is to be a human being, for the whole fruit is already present in the seed.--Tertullian, 197 AD
It's interesting to see how words can be echoed across ages.
#7:
Any practical benefit they serve (education, entertainment, scientific research, species conservation) can be provided in other ways that don’t infringe the natural liberty and well-being of wild animals.
Gerald Durrell, in The Stationary Ark and elsewhere, argues strongly (and on the basis of a great deal of experience) that the concept of "natural liberty" is meaningless to most non-human animals and is irrelevant to their well-being. Rather, their well-being depends on, among other things, availability of appropriate territory and mates. There are certainly species for which appropriate territory is a challenge to provide in zoos, but anyone who claims that problem of zoos is that they "infringe natural liberty" isn't worth listening to.
It’s very doubtful that men and women without any personal faith at all can really devote themselves to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Hogwash! Based on what? How long will you religious types persist in such specious reasoning?
That’s one reason, among many, that we’ve never had a president who proclaimed himself an atheist, or who never acknowledged our nation’s gratitude to God.
No, the real reason is prejudice, pure and simple.
#23 Employment as an institution which treats a father of five as a fungible productivity unit equivalent to a bachelor, or a single woman, or even a wife and mother, is a deliberate institutionalization of inhumanity. Deliberate institutionalization of inhumanity is a moral evil, so the institutionalization of equal pay for equal work is immoral.
I've read some of Zippy's writings and this is an example of his moral logic exercises. First, because an employers chooses to pay everyone the same for the same work is not dehumanizing to anyone. On the other hand, choosing to pay different wages for the same work or paying the same wage for different work is not immoral either. He obviously missed the parable about the vineyard and the laborers. Did the owner of the vineyard treat the workers who labored the longest as simple productivity units because he gave the same wages to those who worked far shorter hours? The vineyard owner rightly stated that it was his money to lawfully do with as he pleased. I don't see how it is remotely dehumanizing for a company to say that we pay X for job Y.
The problem with zippy's argument is that it detaches wages from productivity. What incentive is there for the father of five to learn a new skill if he is paid higher simply for being a father of five? Likewise why should the single person increase their skills if they will always be paid less.
Likewise why would a person hire a father of five since he would have to pay him a premium wage? Would he be able to force customers to pay a higher price or would his customers leave for the competitor who employs the single person.
Re Zoos:
I'm with you, Joe! Who needs a place to go to behold the beauty of creation or the genius of the Creator?
The sooner we're done with zoos, the sooner we can kill them all.
It’s very doubtful that men and women without any personal faith at all can really devote themselves to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Really? Of all the atheists you actually know, or even know about, how many of them actually devote themselves to the contrary proposition? How many atheists have you seen fighting AGAINST racial equality, or FOR any of the discrimination the Civil Rights Movement opposed? How many atheists have you seen advocating the restoration of monarchy, feudalism, or titles of nobility? How many atheists have said about Christians the things this moron just said about atheists?
While many persons of all faiths have fought valiantly for equal justice for all people, many other persons of faith have fought AGAINST this ideal, and have used their religious doctrine to justify their actions. I have yet to see a similar divide among atheists -- the overwhelming majority of them have always been in the pro-equality camp, and many of them oppose religion because they see it as creating inequality.
That’s one reason, among many, that we’ve never had a president who proclaimed himself an atheist, or who never acknowledged our nation’s gratitude to God.
No, the reason for this is that there are too many bigots like this fool, who make up such nonsensical false-witness about atheists, never fact-check their assertions, and would never vote for one under any circumstances.
And this hack is your idea of a "public intellectual?" Please.
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Re No. 3,
The term, "evangelical" has been pretty much re-defined in the minds of the general public to mean a far-right republican, war supporter, and who looks down upon people who do not believe their version of Christianity. Some christians might not want to associated with this definition.
Ofcourse, there are a few remaining examples of liberal evangelicals such as Gushee, Yoder, and Campolo still around, but that's not who the general public thinks of when they hear the word evangelical. Maybe I shouldn't have used the term "liberal evangelical" either, as the word "liberal" has been re-defined to mean a Godless, Un-patriotic, Secular Progressive...
If Jesus came on the scene today folks like James Dobson and Tony Perkins would say he is too liberal and just doesn't get the importance of the Global War on Terror.
Raging B, re #7,
I agree with you and would like add some relevent info.
In the last 100 years or so, for the most part, the christians who have been fighting for racial equality, womens rights, and social justice have been members of the mainline Christian denominations (UCC, Methodist, Presbyterians, Episcopaleans, and so forth). The more conservative Christian organizations eventually followed along, but now wealthy conservatives are funding groups like the "Institute for Religion and Democracy" and other so-called renewal groups. They say they want to bring the denominations back to traditional beliefs, but really what they want to do is shut down one of the few important voices for progressive changes in America. For example, prior to the invasion and occupation of Iraq the National Council of Churchs spoke out against the status quo and questioned the wisdom of what was about to happen. Five years later much of what they said has turned out to be correct. At the time they caught a lot of heat for being far left and unpatriotic.
Embarrassed by Jesus? I think that's a bit harsh. It might be closer to embarrassed by those claiming his name.
JohnW,
Does it bother you that you are more often in agreement with people like Raging Bee who is openly contemptuous of Christianity than you are with fellow believers who happen to differ with you politically?
JohnW:
If, by "Yoder," you mean John Howard Yoder, then I have to disagree. He was neither a liberal nor an evangelical, and he isn't still around.
Milan: Doesn't it bother you that you can't actually address the points JohnW made, except by saying he's in agreement with someone else whose points you can't actually address? Doesn't it bother you that you haven't even tried to offer a factual case to dispute the facts JohnW just posted?
And what makes you think I'm "openly contemptuous of Christianity," as opposed to "openly contemptuous of certain people who spout incoherent bigoted nonsense and call it Christianity?"
Raging Bee,
Was my question directed at you?
Who qualifies as the general public? Me? The only place I've seen that definition shift has been among the people who come leave comments here that are trying to demonize the evangelicals.
Re 12,
Yes, it bothers me, but not the way you might think. It bothers me that people may become contemptuous of the Gospel of Jesus Christ because the loudest voices proclaiming themselves true christians are often mean-spirited far right idealogues.
"people like" Raging Bee despite not holding the right beliefs about God or who have not accepted Christ as their Lord & Savior are people just like you and me. They have worth and they have morals. We are all humans living on the planet and nobody has all the answers or the corner on all truths.
Milan: MY questions were directed at you. Do you have an answer, or not?
Raging Bee,
Your comments on this site are the only evidence some of us need of your contempt of Christianity. You call basic and fundamental Christian views on sin, salvation and Jesus Christ hateful and intolerant. These theological ideas are only incoherent, bigoted nonsense to one who holds Christianity in contempt.
Re: #7 - My sister and I had a conversation about zoos about over Christmas. She spent several years working for a zoo and we were discussing their continued purpose in a world with easy global travel, the Internet and TV. While most of the general public won't be able to afford to travel to Africa or Asia to see some animals live, we always have Animal Planet. For study, travel isn't really out of the reach of professional research organizations. For some of the poorest countries, every little bit helps - a research team can put some money into the local economy for guides, lodging and transportation.
Species preservation seems the best reason to maintain zoos today, and while there may be better ways to breed animals in captivity, the sad truth is, the display of animals and sale of soda and popcorn helps to pay for some of the work that goes on. Unfortunately, in some cases, unless we can get real habitat protection and enforcement against hunting, some animals will continue to struggle. My sister told me elephants have a terrible time breeding in captivity and they suffer all sorts of other problems like arthritis. It's sort of a lose-lose proposition.
You call basic and fundamental Christian views on sin, salvation and Jesus Christ hateful and intolerant.
Excuse me, but the views you call "fundamental Christian views" are NOT uniformly shared by all Christians; those who do hold them do not always express the same ideas the same way with the same emphases; nor have they continued unchanged throughout the history of Christianity. You are indeed being "hateful and intolerant" when you try to pretend that all Christians are required to have the same ideas all the time, and never question or examine any of the tenets of their faith. I grew up in a Christian nation, and I've studied enough history, and listened to enough Christians of all stripes, to know that there are more than one kind of Christian, and those who try to pretend they're the only "true" Christians are depriving themselves of huge chunks of accumulated spirituality and wisdom.
Raging Bee,
Anyone is free to believe whatever they want. However, tell me how one who doesn't believe that we are all sinners, saved by grace through the death and resurruction of Jesus Christ can call themselves a Christian? There isn't a catholic, protestant, or member of the Orthodox church that would object to that basic formulation of Christianity.
However, tell me how one who doesn't believe that we are all sinners, saved by grace through the death and resurruction of Jesus Christ can call themselves a Christian?
We've already been through this before: the definition of "sin" is slippery -- Christians in your camp change it all the time to suit their rhetorical needs -- "grace" is a vague concept whose meaning is colored by personal experiences, and the story of Christ's death and ressurrection is a very complex and multifaceted thing, again colored in its interpretation by personal experience and understanding. Just because all Christians "believe" in the same concepts in the abstract, does not mean they all think the same way about them in the particular circumstances of their lives and experiences.
Raging Bee,
Weak. What is my "camp" of christians? The person who is calling Christianity subjective and multifaceted is the one who can't accept the direct and simple explanations. that's your problem, not Christendoms.
Oclarki,
This isn't really that difficult-Raging Bee doesn't believe the way you believe and your definition of a Christian is someone who believes like you.
My question for you is this: Can you respect and value him as fellow human being even if he believes the wrong way?
JohnW,
Of course I can respect him. But it doesn't make conversing with him any less frustrating.
My definition of a Christian isn't someone who believes the like me. I don't set the standard, God has, as revealed through His word.
What I don't understand is how someone who is admittedly not a Christian himself has the nerve to tell someone who has studied and been immersed in Christianity for 30 years that I don't know what Christians believe. I'm not talking about obscure or trivial doctrines, but the bedrock concepts of salvation, grace and sin.
Is the definition of unworthy as slippery in your opinion as the definition of sin? We are all unworthy of being in the full presence of the Most Holy God. How about the definition of sin that is in the Bible? According to the Bible, we are all sinners. And all sin, no matter how small or inconsequential, makes us unworthy.
Grace is no more vague a concept than any other word in language, and all definitions can be applied to God's Grace in one way or another.
Christ's death and resurrection... well, no matter what denomination the Christian, it is pretty much accepted all across the board that Jesus was the perfect (meaning sinless, wholy worthy and holy in mind and spirit) blood sacrifice that expiated all our sins and that Christ arose again in fulfillment of the scriptures (God's promise to all of us of our salvation) to demonstrate God's Glory... and while Christians may not agree on the value it holds in their lives and/or experiences, it's difficult to see how it can be interpreted differently and still consider oneself a Christian.
Re: #7
It seems silly to oppose zoos on the grounds of humane treatment of animals without first opposing the meat industry. I'd rather be a caged gorilla than a gorged cow headed for slaughter. If zoological education can be obtained in other ways, so can protein.
I should make clear at this point that I do eat meat. I feel bad about that sometimes, but not while I'm doing it. I also go to the zoo regularly. I rarely if ever feel bad about that. It is a fine zoo with healthy animals whose lifespans greatly exceed those of their wild cousins.
...We are all unworthy of being in the full presence of the Most Holy God...
You want to wallow in self-hatred and pretend it's God's will? Go ahead. I, for one, am perfectly capable of seeking and feeling the presence of the Divine without need of such pointlessly demeaning drivel. And no, saying it comes from the Bible does not make it any less pointless. There are huge chunks of the Bible for which many, if not most, Christians have no use in their lives or their spiritual journeys.
...it's difficult to see how it can be interpreted differently and still consider oneself a Christian.
Just because something is difficult for YOU to see, does not mean it's wrong or impossible. There are many people who see things you or I find difficult to see. It's difficult for me to see the curvature of the Earth; but that doesn't mean the Earth is flat.
Oclarki and Symmtheory,
Just want to be clear: I'm not trying to say Raging B is a mainstream evangelical Christian. I might be outside this category myself too.
Maybe you could pray for us to have our minds open to the truth?
I fell nitpicky today: I have recently noiced on both TV and some BLOGS that the logic fallacy of "begging the question" is being used to mean something like, "raising the question." As in, "These answers beg the question of whether Christians are talking about their faith enough."
To beg the question means to include in the argument a premise that itself must be assumed to be true.
Oh? I'm not sure Evangelicals would classify me (a Catholic, you know a papist) as a mainstream evangelical Christian either. Would you classify Raging Bee and yourself as Universal Unitarians (or would that be Unitarian Universalists)? That's the only conclusion I can come to about Raging Bee. The Raging Bee talks as if he or she goes to a church (and I use that term loosely) where the only sin is a fixed or concrete religious doctrine.
Will do.
I'm going to let God classify me and try to listen what he has to say through the bible, experiences, other people, and so forth.
Let's wish Raging B the best as a fellow human being trying to find his way in the world too.
Wow, so much effort to label me, so little effort to address the substance of what I said. Looks like the argument's about over, eh?
Raging Bee,
I pray for the anger in your heart. May God deliver you from the bondage of hate that prevents you from loving your neighbor.
Why thank you, Brian! And may Zeus, Appollo, Ares, Aphrodite and Athena deliver you from the escapism that prevents you from assimilating new ideas (or even old ones).
Oops, I almost forgot: May Hermes and Chronos deliver you from the bondage of seeing all differing views as "hate." (Hey, I'm not the one blithering about eternal punishment in a big fireplace.)
Raging B,
You forgot to add the Wiccan Goddess of Fertility.....
Which one?
It's not much effort at all really. You make it easy. There's so little substance in what you said, so much vaguery indeed, that it is doubtful that you hold any opinion to argue over.
I may not necessarily agree with Lawler's doubts about anyone without a personal faith, but they are after all, only an expression of his doubts. Considering your outburst, i.e. calling him a moron, it would seem his doubts are not necessarily unfounded. You on the other hand, have done a very poor job in articulating why we should ignore the example set by the many atheists that comprised the ranks of the Communists who perpetrated mass murder in the Soviet Union.
You on the other hand, have done a very poor job in articulating why we should ignore the example set by the many atheists that comprised the ranks of the Communists who perpetrated mass murder in the Soviet Union.
That's because that was not the subject of this thread. Now that you have made it so -- which Christians tend to do when all their other attempts to trash atheists fail -- I'll respond by saying: a) the atheistic Communists weren't the only people ever to perpetrate mass-murder; b) the Nazis did something similar, using religious (specifically Christian) justification; c) you'd be hard-pressed to find a single atheist who agrees with such mass-murder, either today or in the era when it happened; d) many atheistic Communists explicitly broke with the USSR over such atrocities; and e) while the leaders of Communist Russia pretended to be atheist, many of the people who supported their atrocities were not -- Russia, as a society, was more (Eastern Orthodox) Christian than atheist.
If atheists have to take responsibility for Stalinism, then, by the same reasoning, Christians must also take responsibility for (just to name a few) the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Burning Times, the Holocaust, the murder of Matthew Shepherd, and all of the atrocities committed pursuant to the Reformation -- all of which were explicitly done in Jesus' name.
You on the other hand, have done a very poor job in articulating why we should ignore the example set by the many atheists that comprised the ranks of the Communists who perpetrated mass murder in the Soviet Union.
That's because that was not the subject of this thread. Now that you have made it so -- which Christians tend to do when all their other attempts to trash atheists fail -- I'll respond by saying: a) the atheistic Communists weren't the only people ever to perpetrate mass-murder; b) the Nazis did something similar, using religious (specifically Christian) justification; c) you'd be hard-pressed to find a single atheist who agrees with such mass-murder, either today or in the era when it happened; d) many atheistic Communists explicitly broke with the USSR over such atrocities; and e) while the leaders of Communist Russia pretended to be atheist, many of the people who supported their atrocities were not -- Russia, as a society, was more (Eastern Orthodox) Christian than atheist.
If atheists have to take responsibility for Stalinism, then, by the same reasoning, Christians must also take responsibility for (just to name a few) the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Burning Times, the Holocaust, the murder of Matthew Shepherd, and all of the atrocities committed pursuant to the Reformation -- all of which were explicitly done in Jesus' name.
To wit, I quote from your first comment -
You brought it up first. Your revisionist history notwithstanding... when the body count is compared between Christian believers and non-believers, the non-believers win hands down. You are engaging in moral equivalency between believers and non-believers with a moral geometry that calculates weight of a crime based on the perpetrators belief system is what it looks like.
You brought it up first.
No, I brought up a completely different topic, and you know it.
You are engaging in moral equivalency between believers and non-believers...
No, I'm demonstrating that the atrocities you atribute to non-believers were also committed by believers, in the name of their belief. This is a fact, and crying "revisionist history" -- without disproving any of my statements -- does not change the facts.
...with a moral geometry that calculates weight of a crime based on the perpetrators belief system is what it looks like.
This bit is so incoherent that I can only take it as an admission that you've lost the argument and are floundering about trying to pretend otherwise.
Are you now denying that you left the following as a comment:
Are you also denying that the Soviet regime was chock full of atheists that did exactly what you said most atheists haven't done? Are you denying the Soviet regime is evidence of atheists that actually did devote themselves to the contrary of the proposition that all men are created equal?
Except that I'm having to spell out for you exactly how my comment refuted the statement of yours that I quoted. Declaring yourself the victor of an argument like that is a cheap theatrical trick. It might even work if your real goal is to discourage anybody from engaging your arguments in the future. As time goes on, it will get easier and easier for you to declare victory when people don't even respond to your assertions.
Are you also denying that the Soviet regime was chock full of atheists that did exactly what you said most atheists haven't done?
No, I'm pointing out that "atheist" regimes are not the only ones committing such atrocities, so you have a hard time pretending this is in any way the fault of atheism. I also pointed out a lot of other things along these lines, and you have yet to respond to any of it. So no, pointing out that you're not responding to my points is not just a "cheap theatrical trick." It's a fact, and I'll keep on stating the fact until it changes.
You brought it up first. Your revisionist history notwithstanding... when the body count is compared between Christian believers and non-believers, the non-believers win hands down.
Baloney! You Christians just do not know how to count. Ever hear of the 30 Years War? The Reformation?
Here's a sad piece of history that never gets worked into the tally of what faith killed the most: The Congo Free State. Ever hear of it? Not likely. From the 1880s to the early 20th century the Christian King Leopold II of Belgium used the nation that is now Congo as his own personal forced labor camp. It was a capitalist, Christian gulag. An estimated 8 to 10 million Congolese were systematically murdered, starved, tortured and/or worked to death. That's three Cambodias' worth of genocide!
He justified it all by saying that he was bringing Christianity to the natives.
That is what you say NOW you are pointing out, when what you said in your first comment was that most atheists would not be contrary to the proposition that all men are created equal. If that were true, then there should not have been a Soviet regime since there should not have been enough atheists to power it according to your assertion. I'm not pretending that atrocities are specifically the fault of atheists, but it certainly seems like you are pretending they are NOT responsible for some.
How many atheists have said about Christians the things that Lawler said about persons lacking a personal faith? You may not be atheist specifically, but I still count you among the MANY who lack personal faith that question whether or not people with a personal faith can really devote themselves to the proposition that all men are created equal. Quit pretending that you don't do the same things that people you call morons do.
Yes, I've heard of them, but unlike you, I don't limit my focus on them alone. I know, for instance, that Christians have always been in the minority with respect to the world and history at large. I also know for a fact, that pound for pound, non-believers can be every bit as violent as you finger-pointers like to point out that Christians are. Therefore, you guys still win hands down when it comes to body count.
Yes, I've heard of them, but unlike you, I don't limit my focus on them alone. I know, for instance, that Christians have always been in the minority with respect to the world and history at large.
What does that mean? Christians have been a majority in the West from the time that Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of Rome until very recently. What is the body count in Europe and the Americas for that period?
I also know for a fact, that pound for pound, non-believers can be every bit as violent as you finger-pointers like to point out that Christians are. Therefore, you guys still win hands down when it comes to body count.
You know this for a fact? How so?
I'm not interested in the finger pointing, but if people insist on it we should at least get the counts straight. History shows that men will murder each other regardless of what their religious beliefs are. There's no one belief system that will make a man a murderer, nor is there any belief system that will prevent him from becoming from if that is his inclination.
That Lenin and I are both athiests says nothing about my propensity for murder, just as the fact that you and Torquemada are both Christians says nothing about yours. I'd be happy if we all stopped the finger pointing.
Exactly, it seems you know this for a fact too. Now explain why you believe it is necessary to exclude the rest of history and the rest of the world when you compare Christians to non-Christians on the subject of violence.
I wasn't comparing Christians vs non-Christians, I was comparing Christians vs Atheists. Are you lumping Athiests in with all the other non-Christians? Athiests are not Muslims, neither are they Hindus, Jews or Pagans. But they are all men, which means they are all violent. All races and religions, including Atheists, share in mankind's bloody legacy.
At least you aren't trying to pretend that atheists are exemplars of non-violence and champions of human rights when compared to Christians like Raging Bee was. I take exception though, to your attempt to paint Christians as a majority to Atheists by focusing exclusively on Europe and North America in geography and the last 2000 odd years historically. If anything Atheists and Christian populations have been about equal when considering the whole of history and the whole of the geographical world.
If anything Atheists and Christian populations have been about equal when considering the whole of history and the whole of the geographical world.
No they're not! Atheism has been a very rare phenomenon until historically recent times. Are you saying that all non-Christians are Atheists? Are you saying that Muslims and Hindus are Atheists?
Well, I suppose everybody has to have their fairy tales. Atheist - anybody who does not believe in a God or gods... not just the people who openly oppose the belief in a God or gods. It even includes the ones who went to religious services despite the disbelief because they were afraid their disbelief would bring themselves harm, and includes the ones that went to religious services despite their disbelief because they were uninterested in rebellion. Are you really trying to get me to believe that people everywhere and everywhen until the last couple of centuries believed in a God or gods? What a crock of nonsense!