Thirty Three Things (x2)
{Special Edition}

2. Theologian Wayne Grudem's Advice on Interpreting the Word

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#40 -- 1. The Trouble with Limited Government

2. First recorded experiment? Daniel 1: 1-16 (HT: Neatorama)

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#41 -- 1. New Testament Worldview by Vern Poythress [PDF] (HT: Tribalogue)

2. Philosopher William Lane Craig on the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

The real lesson to be learned from the case of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that it shows how completely out of touch our popular culture is with the great tradition of natural theology. One might as well be speaking a foreign language. That people could think that belief in God is anything like the groundless belief in a fantasy monster shows how utterly ignorant they are of the works of Anselm, Aquinas, Leibniz, Paley, Sorley, and a host of others, past and present. No doubt part of the fault lies with equally ignorant Christians who have no answer when called upon to give a reason for the hope within and who therefore give the impression of arbitrary and groundless belief. But it must also be attributed to poor education, intellectual laziness, and a lack of curiosity. Given the revival of natural theology in our day over the last half century, we have no excuse for such lame caricatures of theistic belief as belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

(HT: Maverick Philosopher)

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#42 -- 1. The Epidemic on the Playground

2. Must One Believe in God Before Miracles?

#43 -- 1. Best List of End of Year Lists: Fimoculous' Lists: 2007

2. The New York Times Magazine 7th Annual Year in Ideas

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#44 -- 1. Clive Thompson on the Age of Microcelebrity

Microcelebrity is the phenomenon of being extremely well known not to millions but to a small group -- a thousand people, or maybe only a few dozen. As DIY media reach ever deeper into our lives, it's happening to more and more of us. Got a Facebook account? A whackload of pictures on Flickr? Odds are there are complete strangers who know about you -- and maybe even talk about you.

2. Jeffrey Bell on social conservatism:

Most social conservatives believe that the central principle asserted in the Declaration of Independence is true: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." While almost all Americans respect these words at least as a sentiment or metaphor, it is a fact that most--not all--social conservatives believe them to be literally true, while most--not all--opponents of social conservatism do not believe them to be literally true.

#45 -- 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)

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#46 -- 1. Robert P. George on "Law and Moral Purpose" (Via RedState):

[T]he general welfare--the common good--requires that government be limited. Government's responsibility is primary when the questions involve defending the nation from attack and subversion, protecting people from physical assaults and various other forms of depredation, and maintain public order. In other ways, however, its role is subsidiary: to support the work of families, religious communities, and other civil institutions of civil society that shoulder the primary burden of forming upright and decent citizens, caring for those in need, encouraging people to meet their responsibilities to one another while also discouraging them from harming themselves or others.

Governmental respect for individual freedom and the autonomy of nongovernmental spheres of authority is, then, a requirement of political morality. Government must not try to run people's lives or usurp the roles and responsibilities of families, religious beliefs, and other character-and-culture-forming authoritative communities. The usurpation of the just authority of families, religious communities, and other institutions is unjust in principle, often seriously so, and the record of big government in the twentieth century--even when it has not degenerated into vicious totalitarianism--shows that it does little good in the long run and frequently harms those it seeks to help.

2. Jeffrey R. Snyder on A Nation of Cowards":

The advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply hand over the goods is founded on the notion that one's life is of incalculable value, and that no amount of property is worth it. Put aside, for a moment, the outrageousness of the suggestion that a criminal who proffers lethal violence should be treated as if he has instituted a new social contract: "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I want." ...

Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract, but also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty. If the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with others, then crime always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth your life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can hardly be said to exist.

(HT: The American Scene)

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#47 -- 1. A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth [PDF] -- A draft of an article written by Lydia and Tim McGrew for the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland. (HT: Fides Quaerens Intellectum)

2. Info visualizations of the social networks and cross references in the Bible (HT: Kottke.org)

I once heard an economist rail against the consumerist patterns of our society, illustrating his point by speaking disdainfully of people who think "that economic freedom means having the right to choose between McDonald's and Burger King." I must confess that on occasion I take a few minutes to think about whether to buy a Quarter Pounder or a Whopper. But what irked me about the economist who put down the kind of culinary choice that some of us consider non-trivial is that he is a wine connoisseur. I recently heard him go into great detail about the relative virtues of two kinds of Cabernet Sauvignon.

The question I wanted to pose to him is not unlike the one I would ask folks who speak disparagingly about a family that switches from a local Methodist parish to a new megachurch charismatic congregation that they find more spiritually fulfilling. Why is that decision a manifestation of consumerism while, say, the moves of Lutheran theologians--I have in mind Father Richard John Neuhaus and Jaroslav Pelikan--to enter into Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are not? At the very least, we need to be careful that we are not betraying an elitist bias with the way we toss around the "consumerism" label. The consumption of sermons and worship styles by an ordinary Christian family looking for an enriching spiritual life may not be all that different from the scholars' consumption of theologies and liturgies.

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#49 -- 1. Ezra Klein on bookshelves:

Bookshelves are not for displaying books you've read -- those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject. More importantly, I am the type of person who amasses many books, on all sorts of subjects. I'm pretty sure that's what a bookshelf is there to prove. The reading of those books is entirely incidental.

(HT: Postmodern Conservative)

2. The Punctuation of Political Power

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#50 -- 1. Vern S. Poythress, who earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard, on A Biblical View Of Mathematics:

The neutrality postulate holds special attractiveness as applied to mathematics, because of the apparent widespread agreement about mathematical truths. "Everybody knows that 2 + 2 = 4." If religious beliefs really have an influence, why is there such widespread agreement, cutting across religious lines? We intend to answer this question on several levels: (1) by showing that the agreement in mathematics is not so widespread, nor so uncorrelated with religious beliefs, as the textbooks would have you believe (§§2-7); (2) by showing that non-Christian philosophy of mathematics is involved in deep-set cleavages and antinomies, in its understanding of even so simple a truth as 2 + 2 = 4 (§§11-18); (3) by showing that only on a thoroughgoing Biblical basis can one genuinely understand and affirm the real agreement about mathematical truths (§25).

So, first of all, what differences have arisen in mathematics in connection with religious belief? Differences have arisen over arithmetical truth, over standards for proof, over number-theoretic truth, over geometric truth, over truths of analysis, over mathematical existence-not to mention the long-standing epistemological disputes over the source of mathematical truth.

(HT: City of God)

2. The latest New York magazine has a fascinating article by Po Bronson on how and why kids lie:

Out of the 36 topics, the average teen was lying to his parents about twelve of them. The teens lied about what they spent their allowances on, and whether they'd started dating, and what clothes they put on away from the house. They lied about what movie they went to, and whom they went with. They lied about alcohol and drug use, and they lied about whether they were hanging out with friends their parents disapproved of. They lied about how they spent their afternoons while their parents were at work. They lied about whether chaperones were in attendance at a party or whether they rode in cars driven by drunken teens....

For two decades, parents have rated "honesty" as the trait they most wanted in their children. Other traits, such as confidence or good judgment, don't even come close. On paper, the kids are getting this message. In surveys, 98 percent said that trust and honesty were essential in a personal relationship. Depending on their ages, 96 to 98 percent said lying is morally wrong.

So when do the 98 percent who think lying is wrong become the 98 percent who lie?

Bronson's article contains a number of revealing tidbits, including:

1. Lying is related to intelligence. The smarter the kid, the better they are at lying.
2. On average, a 4-year-old will lie once every two hours, while a 6-year-old will lie about once every hour and a half.
3. Scholars have found that kids who live in threat of consistent punishment don't lie less. Instead, they become better liars, at an earlier age--learning to get caught less often.
4. Children lie because they see their parents lie, and learn to imitate them. Adults inadvertently teach children that honesty only creates conflict, and dishonesty is an easy way to avoid conflict.
5. Permissive parents don't actually learn more about their children's lives.
6. Most rules-heavy parents don't actually enforce them since its too much work.
7. Parents view arguing with their teenager as destructive to their relationship, while teens see it as strengthening their bond.

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#51 -- 1. The Case of the Typing Monkeys

The "Monkey Theorem," in its popular form, holds that if you have an infinite number of monkeys banging away at an infinite number of keyboards, eventually you will get from one of them Shakespeare's Sonnet Eighteen, the first four lines of which read:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? /Thou art more lovely and more temperate./ Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May/ And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Well, in the 1990's the British National Council of the Arts, in an inventive use of taxpayers' money, placed six monkeys in a cage with a computer. After banging away at the keyboard for a whole month - and using the computer as a bathroom at the same time - the monkeys had typed 50 pages but failed to produce a single word in the English language, not even the letter "a" by itself. [Gerry] Schroeder applied probability theory to the "Monkey Theorem" and calculated that the chance of getting Sonnet Eighteen by chance was 26 multiplied by itself 488 times (488 is the number of letters in the sonnet) or, in base 10, 10 to the 690th. If that number is written out, it is 1 with 690 zeroes following it. But, as Schroeder showed, the number of particles in the entire universe - protons, electrons and neutrons - is only ten to the 80th. Thus, even if every particle in the universe were a computer chip that had been spinning out random letters a million times a second since the beginning of time, there would still be no Shakespeare's Sonnet Eighteen by chance. As [philosopher Anthony Flew] concluded, "if the theorem [the Monkey Theorem] won't work for a single sonnet, then of course it's simply absurd to suggest that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance.

(HT: Cranach)

2. Carol Platt Liebau, who recently wrote a book about sex in America, on the term "prude":

[A]s I point out in the book, the word "prude" derives from the old French "prude femme," meaning "a good or virtuous woman." It's revealing that, these days, the term "slut" has become a widely accepted, affection term of familiarity among girlfriends, but being labeled a "prude" is nothing short of a social disaster.

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#52 - 1. The Greatest Question Ever Asked by the Devil

The great question of the Book of Job is not "Why do the righteous suffer?" but "Why do people serve God?" Would you serve God if there were no blessings attached? What if God were to show you no mercy? What if there were no heaven? What if there were no hell? Would you still serve God? Why or why not? The Devil asked a legitimate question.

2. David Mills on how some people like the idea of the "natural family" until it means changing or re-thinking their own lifestyle:

When a pastor says something in a sermon that you do not like, goes the old joke, he has "gone from preaching to meddling." He has stopped telling pleasant and comforting stories (or enjoyably convicting stories about the sins you don't commit) and started interfering with your life....

You go from preaching to meddling when, for example, you assert that the Natural Family has a "quiverful" of children; that it requires a permanent, unbreakable bond between the husband and wife; or that it is marked by what are called "sex roles." This is too much nature, it is nature untempered by technology and culture, as if you were asking people to go naked in the winter or hunt and kill their own food and eat it raw.

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#53 - 1. Doug Groothuis on recovering from fetus fatigue

It appears that millions of evangelicals, especially younger ones, are experiencing fetus fatigue. They are tired of the abortion issue taking center stage; it is time to move on to newer, hipper things--the sort of issues that excite Bono: aid to Africa, the environment, and cool tattoos. Abortion has been legal since they were born; it is the old guard that gets exercised about millions of abortions over the years. So, let's not worry that Barak Obama and Hillary are pro-choice. That is a secondary issue. After all, neither could do that much damage regarding this issue.

Evangelicals (if that word has any meaning), for God's sake, please wake up and remember the acres of tiny corpses you cannot see. Yes, the Christian social vision is holistic. We should endeavor to restore shalom to this beleaguered planet. That includes helping Africa, preserving the environment, and much more. However, the leading domestic moral issue remains the value of helpless human life. Since Roe v. Wade, approximately 50 million unborn humans have been killed through abortion. Stalin said, "One death is a tragedy. A million dead is a statistic." Too many are now Stalinists on abortion. The numbers mean nothing, apparently. The vast majority of these abortions were not done to save the life of the mother, a provision I take to be justified. Things have reached the point where bumper stickers say, "Don't like abortion, don't have one." It is simply a matter of private, subjective taste. But how about this: "Don't like slavery, don't own slaves"? Two human beings are involved in this matter, inescapably. . . .

Evangelicals, for God's sake, please wake up. Remember the least, the last, and the lost: the millions of unborn human beings who hang in the balance (Matthew 25:31-46). No, this is not the only issue, but it is a titanic issue that cannot be ignored. Rouse yourself to recover from fetus fatigue. God is watching.

2. Steven Garber on making peace with proximate justice:

Proximate justice realizes that something is better than nothing. It allows us to make peace with some justice, some mercy, all the while realizing that it will only be in the new heaven and new earth that we find all our longings finally fulfilled, that we will see all of God's demands finally met. It is only then--there we will see all of the conditions for human flourishing finally in place, socially, economically, and politically.

(HT: Common Grounds Online)

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#54 -- 1. David Cameron, head of Britain's Conservative Party, recently gave a great speech on the need for family-friendly policies:

Today I want to talk to you about a simple ambition that I have for our country. It's at the heart of what I believe, and what I believe our country needs. My ambition is to make Britain more family-friendly. To make our country a better place to bring up children. Not just because it's the right thing to do, not just because my family is the most important thing in my life, but because families should be the most important thing in our country's life.

Why? We all know why. Because those kids at the end of the street, causing mayhem, smashing up the bus shelter...we know what the problem is. It goes back to the home, the way they were brought up, the lack of a strong family to teach them that you just don't behave like that. It's families. Those young people who leave school without qualifications, expecting nothing but a life on welfare. We know what the problem is. The problem is they never had that strong family saying: go on, try hard at school, do your homework, make something of your life. Those people in jail, time after time, addicted to drugs and unable to break free of their habit and a life of crime. We know what the problem is. It's families and be clear: there are single parents, divorced parents, widows - all working hard to keep their families together, to keep their children on track. The modern Conservative Party is the party of families, and we need to support them all.

(HT: ConservativeHome's ToryDiary)

2. John Mark Reynolds on longing for love:

Somehow the traditional Christian sexual ethic of Dante and Donne has become confused with repression or being undersexed. Nothing could be further from the truth. If my email box is any indication, libertine sexual rules have not made us happier or better lovers. It has made things worse. It certainly did for me.

Chastity is a positive thing, not the lack of something. It is, I think, the active nourishment of love to prepare it for the appropriate beloved. It is a great gift....

In old movies, making love was about intimacy and might culminate in marriage. Marriage was more, so much more, than the sex act, though it was not less than that. In modern terms, making love is merely a nice way to say the f-word.

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#55 -- 1. "Wikihistory" is an intriguing, very brief science fiction short story by Desmond Warzel. As BoingBoing notes, the form is "a series of messages posted to a time-travelers' forum -- it's basically a Wikipedia edit war, where the old hands have to keep on slapping down the noobs for killing Hitler"

International Association of Time Travelers: Members' Forum Subforum: Europe - Twentieth Century - Second World War Page 263

11/15/2104

At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote:

Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl's cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!

At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:

Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.

At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:

Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?

Read the rest here.

2. J. Budziszewski on what we lose when we forget what sex is for:

Suppose a young man is more interested in using his lungs to get high by sniffing glue. What would you think of me if I said, "That's interesting--I guess the purpose of my lungs is to oxygenate my blood, but the purpose of his lungs is to get high"? You'd think me a fool, and rightly so. The purpose of the lungs is built into the design of the lungs. He doesn't change that purpose by sniffing glue; he only violates it.

We can ascertain the purposes of the other features of our design in the same way. The purpose of the eyes is to see, the purpose of the heart is to pump blood, the purpose of the thumb is to oppose the fingers so as to grasp, the purpose of the capacity for anger is to protect endangered goods, and so on. If we can ascertain the purpose of all those other powers, there is no reason to think that we cannot ascertain the purpose or purposes of the sexual powers too.

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#56 -- 1. Jerry Bower on how the "last week of [Jesus'] life was driven by clashes pertaining to wealth and poverty - freedom and tyranny."

Rome needed money to buy off the urban mob, and Herod needed Rome to keep down the Palestinian rabble. And so when the people, innocents at home, came to Jerusalem to make their offerings to God, they were met at each step in the process of religious devotion with another checkpoint at which tolls were extracted. The journey to Jerusalem often meant crossing a Roman checkpoint - ka-ching! Since the trip was long and hard on the animals, it was better to travel light and buy the sacrifices in Jerusalem - ka-ching! You can't use pagan Roman coins for that sort of thing, of course, so off to the money changers - ka-ching again. Tithes, offerings, sacrifices, festivals, Rome got her cut - ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching. In fact, that's the only reason there even was a temple or a King Herod. Rome would have long ago plundered it and killed him, except you don't kill the goose who lays the golden eggs.

If the temple was the bridge between heaven and earth, Herod was the troll who lived under the bridge. Every pilgrim was forced to pay the toll. That's what kept Herod in power, no ka-ching, no king. Ordinary Jews hated the regime, and the anger was boiling over, but Herod didn't care what they thought; he had Rome on his side.

Into this world steps the young son of a Galilean entrepreneur.

2. Ty Burr, of the Boston Globe, on the cultural force of media bad girls:

Bringing up children in 21st-century America is difficult enough, given a pop culture that constantly promotes a vulgar, empty celebration of self. But do some of our starlets have to work so hard at it? The Spears sisters, Britney and Jamie Lynn, have mutated from wholesome pop tarts to whacked-out baby factories. Lindsay Lohan acts out her rebellion against the entire culture on the evening news. Paris Hilton - well, Paris Hilton. That's all you need to say.

As a parent of two girls, age 11 and 13 at this writing, I should probably be wringing my hands. I'm not, because when I listen to my daughters and their friends, I hear a moral code being forged upon the paparazzi traumas of the famous and unfortunate. There are levels of judgment going on here, moral siftings and weighings. Children are both more and less innocent than adults take them for, and they process the role models our culture hands them in complex ways.

The new bad girls, it's clear, are important figures in the culture. But they don't necessarily teach young girls how to behave - just as likely, they're teaching them how not to behave. They have become anti-role models.

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#57 -- 1. Is it permissible for God to kill people?

Many people have difficulty with God's acts in the Bible because God seems to be committing or commanding immoral acts (e.g., when God commands the Israelites to wipe out certain people-groups, including children). I think that many of these charges can be alleviated if some good justification can be given for the claim that it is morally permissible for God to kill people as he does in the Bible.

One step towards arguing for the claim that it is morally permissible for God to kill people is to argue that people do not have the right not to be killed by God. I may have the right that you not kill me, and vice versa, but perhaps there are different considerations with God. The difference is that while others don't own my body, God may own my body.

(HT: Fides Quaerens Intellectum)

2. Reihan Salam on Rickrolling and Racial Transcendence:

Rick Astley, known for his 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up," has again become an object of amusement and fascination as Internet pranksters deceptively deploy links to his most celebrated song's groundbreaking music video.

Apparently there's something very, very funny about Rick Astley, judging by the endurance of "rickrolling."...

The profound illogic of this video defies description. Yet one suspects there's more to it. As an exemplar of "blue-eyed soul," Astley could be condemned for appropriating a primarily black form of musical expression. But not only was he not condemned - he was embraced by music-lovers of all colors, not least the acrobatic bartender featured in the music video itself. The earnestness and lack of self-consciousness contrasts with the paralyzing cynicism of our own time. What we're seeing is the promise of a post-racial future, in which color distinctions melt away in the white heat (so to speak) of Astley's soulful vocals.

Could it be that Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" is the soundtrack for the Age of Obama?

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#58 -- 1. 110 best books: The perfect library

2. When Christians think about themselves, a different pattern of activity is observed in their brains compared with when non-religious people think about themselves. From the abstract of the paper Neural consequences of religious belief on self-referential processing:

Christianity strongly encourages its believers to surrender to God and to judge the self from God's perspective. We used functional MRI to assess whether this religious belief is associated with neural correlates of self-referential processing distinct from that of non-religious people. Non-religious and Christian participants were scanned while performing tasks of personal-trait judgments regarding the self or public persons....our findings suggest that Christian beliefs result in weakened neural coding of stimulus self-relatedness but enhanced neural activity underlying evaluative processes applied to self-referential stimuli.

(HT: BPS Research Digest)

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#59 -- 1. n + 1 on Dating:

Dating presents itself as an education in human relationships. In fact it's an anti-education. You could invent no worse preparation for love, for marriage, than the tireless pursuit of the perfect partner. Keep Looking, says dating. You're Not Done Yet. What About That One? And That One? Dating, like the tyrant, seeks perfection (within a certain price range). Whereas the heart, like the eye, can only cling to imperfections: her funny stride, and the way her voice breaks, child-like, on the phone. And so the dater, self-baffling, seeks what the heart cannot understand.

We must stop dating. But we can't. Because the only way to stop dating would be to date more, and more efficiently, to become more adept at spotting, on the first date, those things that on the fifth or fifteenth date are going to become a problem. Of course that only makes it worse--by that standard, even Abelard and Heloise wouldn't have made it. The other option is to change yourself. But you'd have done that by now, if you could.

The only way to stop dating is to fall in love. But how, under conditions of dating, would this be possible?

(HT: The American Scene)

2. J.P. Moreland on the Argument from Consciousness:

If we limit our options to theism and naturalism, it is hard to see how finite consciousness could result from the rearrangement of brute matter; it is easier to see how a Conscious Being could produce finite consciousness since, according to theism, the First Being is Himself conscious. Thus, the theist has no need to explain how consciousness can come from materials bereft of it. Consciousness is there from the beginning.

To put the point differently, in the beginning there were either particles or Reason. If you start with particles and just rearrange them according to physical law, you won't get consciousness. If you start with Reason, you already have consciousness.

(HT: Fides Quaerens Intellectum)

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#60 -- 1. David Kuo on God and suffering:

I was in Uganda last month. While there I saw, if not hell, some of its suburbs. The stories are familiar to us all -- dying children, slums beyond description, systemic brokenness that robs hope. So many of those questions popped into my head -- How could God allow this sort of thing? What kind of god could allow children to live like this.

It isn't a new question for me or for any of us. It is among the world's oldest questions I suspect. But as I thought about it something clicked. God isn't allowing this suffering. I am. You are. We are.

I will focus on Africa's suffering. Africa finds itself where it does today because of a billion or more decisions that people made-- individual decisions. A decision not to invest here. A decision to buy a slave there. A decision to drive an unfair trade deal here. A decision to pay diamond miners pennies. Billions and billions of decisions like this have been made over the centuries. The result? Africa today.

Is that God's fault?

I think not. Because at every moment those decisions were made God was whispering for people to do the right thing, the just thing, the merciful thing. But we chose not to listen.

God has done his job. We haven't done ours.

2. Clay Shirky on sitcoms and cognitive surplus:

So how big is that [cognitive] surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

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#62 -- 1. Jennifer Roback Morse on Feminism: An attack on the human body

...[F]eminists don't view gender differentiation as a biological reality to which sensible people must adapt. Sex differences are a cosmic injustice. No demand for social change is too extreme in the service of wiping out these differences. This is great if you happen to be a radical, intent on justifying revolutionary social changes. But if you are a normal person, living in a normal body, this ideology is more than a nuisance. We have painted ourselves into a corner. Under feminist tutelage, we have insisted that women change their fertility in order to accommodate the labor market. We have insisted on the right to raise our children alone, and to spend larger and larger portions of our lives alone.

2. Harvard research reveals the prejudices of babies

One area into which Spelke's team would like to delve deeper is the origins of bigotry in human beings. In the case of skin colour, newborns respond to individuals of all races equally. By three months, however, a baby from a Caucasian household will prefer to gaze at a white face, and a black baby at an African American face. By the age of two or three, they are drawn to their own gender, too. 'There are some very intriguing parallels between the patterns of social preference we find in infants and what seems to go on in adults,' Spelke says.

(HT: kottke.org)

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#63 -- 1. P.J. O'Rourke on "fairness, idealism and other atrocities":

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I've got three kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.

But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that all politicians stink. Impeach George W. Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation's problems will be solved.

But the problem isn't politicians - it's politics. Politics won't allow for the truth. And we can't blame the politicians for that. Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on utoday's campaign trail:

"No, I can't fix public education. The problem isn't the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment The problem is your kids!"

2. Robin Hanson on faith in physicians

After an entire semester hearing how we get little health value from a wide margin of medical spending, almost every student (21 undergrads & 9 grads) said that a big argument against legal faith healing is that it can discourage people from going to regular doctors. Most also said it is hard to evaluate faith healer quality, and to know if they are just in it for the money.

Sigh. Regular docs are mostly in it for the money, and are also hard to evaluate. If we on average get near zero health from our last units of medicine, we are better off replacing those units with anything cheaper, at least if it also gives near zero net health effect and similar non-health benefits. Faith healing seems to fit this bill.

Sure, we vary in how much medicine we get, and in how much we would substitute legal faith healing for medicine. So yes a general trend toward more faith healing would no doubt produce a few people who sometimes get too little medicine. But that harm should be far outweighed by a reduction in harmful overtreatment. Alas, apparently even econ students after a semester of my indoctrination can't see this (only two mentioned it) - we all just love docs too much.

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#64 -- 1. Geerhardus Vos on the biblical concepts of "wisdom" and "folly":

The [Old Testament] idea of "folly" can be best understood from the antithesis it forms to "wisdom." Wisdom is not a theoretical or abstractly scientific apprehension of things, but such a practical immediate insight into their reality and manner of action as enables one to use them to advantage. Correspondingly, a fool is not one who is deficient in the power of logical thought, but one who lacks the natural discernment and tact required for success in life. Both wisdom and folly are teleological conceptions, and rest on the principle of adjustment to a higher law for some practical purpose.

(HT: Tribalogue)

2. Philosophy professor Edward Tingley on how agnostics and atheist are not true skeptics:

All of the people who say that they are "atheists through skepticism, because they see no evidence that God exists," are patently unthinking people, since by virtue of turning skeptic, no one has ever done anything--employed any logic, gathered any evidence, found any way forward--to reach a conclusion about whether God exists. So these atheists have not reached a conclusion; they have made a commitment.

What the scientific skeptic ought to say is this: "Having examined the hard evidence, we declare that route to be exhausted. The only kind of evidence for God's existence that counts will have to be of some other kind--if there is any other kind."

That would be reasonable. And it would be a fine thing for a skeptic to doubt that there is any evidence besides the standard, demonstrable kind--and there are skeptics who do so. But all those who, just because they doubt it, run home with the question answered are frauds like their agnostic brethren if they still call themselves scientists.

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#65 -- 1. The Illuminati is a selection of photos by photographer Evan Baden that show young people seemingly mesmerized by the glow of their electronic devices. Baden explains his project:

In Westernized cultures today, there is a generation that is growing up without the knowledge of what it is to be disconnected. The world in which we are growing up is always on. We are continuously plugged in, and linked up. We take this technology for granted. Not because we are ungrateful, but because we simply don't know a world without it.

From our earliest memories, there has always been a way to connect with others, whether it is Myspace, Facebook, cell phones, e-mail, or instant messenger. And now, with the Internet, instant messaging, and e-mail in our pocket, right there with our phones, we can always feel as if we are part of a greater whole. These devices grace us with the ability to instantly connect to others, and at the same time, they isolate us from those with whom we are connected. They allow for great freedom, yet so often, we are chained to them. They have become part of who we are and how we identify ourselves. These devices ordain us with a wealth of knowledge and communication that would have been unbelievable a generation ago. More and more, we are bathed in a silent, soft, and heavenly blue glow. It is as if we carry divinity in our pockets and purses.

(HT: Ypulse)

2. How the Ideas and Events of 1993 Created the World We Live in Today

Oh, what a year! 1993 contains the seeds of a new world - the military nails down GPS, awareness of climate change dawns, a bunch of kids in Illinois code the first useful browser for the web, Sears discontinues its paper catalog, the X-Files debuts and Wired magazine is born.