Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Turn off Rush Limbaugh and read Russell Kirk

    So says Joe Carter. I once heard Russell Kirk speak, and I would say it’s good advice. (I date myself a bit there!) More importantly, not being conservative myself, let me suggest that liberals and moderates quit seeing all conservatives through the lens of the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. This would require us to read folks like Russell Kirk, and actually think when we respond!

  • Romney Suspending Campaign

    The Washington Post is reporting that Mitt Romney will suspend his campaign, and announce it this afternoon in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee.

    I do love the detail of these “leaks.” According to the story, Romney will say:

    “This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters… many of you right here in this room… have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America.”

    At least he still has his illusions.

    Update: I note that by the time I posted this, the speech had been given, so probably it was an advance copy rather than a detailed leak.

  • The Myth of the Absent Husband

    The story of the temptation and fall (Genesis 3:1-7) is one of the stories that sustains some complentarians and advocates of male leadership and authority. I use “myth” here in the partial technical sense of a story that explains and reinforces a cultural norm.

    In particular, people point out that Eve was taken in by the snake because she didn’t as her husband or because he wasn’t with her. I’ve heard sermons based on these points. Don’t leave you husband! Follow his leadership! Look what happened to Eve! The same sorts of things can be said about consultation. But these views are not supported by the text itself. They are, I believe, examples of reading the white spaces.

    The problem is that nowhere in the story is it specified that Adam was not present, nor is it stated that Adam did not discuss the matter with Eve. The story itself is typical of Hebrew narrative, especially in the Pentateuch. It is short and to the point, with no unneeded words.

    When Eve does share the food with her husband, it says that she gave it to him “with her.” Now it’s interesting that when I was taught this very early, I remember being told that Eve went to look for her husband and then passed him the fruit, thus reinforcing her aloneness and leaving open the option that male leadership principles have been violated. In case you think I’m making this up, and since I grew up Seventh-day Adventist, let me quote Ellen White on the matter:

    The angels had cautioned Eve to beware of separating herself from her husband while occupied in their daily labor in the garden; with him she would be in less danger from temptation than if she were alone. But absorbed in her pleasing task, she unconsciously wandered from his side. On perceiving that she was alone, she felt an apprehension of danger, but dismissed her fears, deciding that she had sufficient wisdom and strength to discern evil and to withstand it. . . . (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 53)

    And again:

    . . . And now, having herself transgressed, she became the agent of Satan in working the ruin of her husband. In a state of strange, unnatural excitement, with her hands filled with the forbidden fruit, she sought his presence, and related all that had occurred. (ibid, p. 56)

    That is, of course, entirely gleaned from the white spaces. The text actually suggests that the two of them were together, and gives no indication that Adam objected, or was any more concerned than his wife. The idea that Adam was tempted by Eve comes not from the story of the actual temptation, but from Adam’s excuse.

  • Reasons -> Intentions -> Actions

    When I was near the end of my first four year enlistment in the United States Air Force, I had already made a firm decision to separate at four years, which I proclaimed quite vigorously. But during the last few weeks I read some things about decision making–I can’t recall where–and I decided to rationally examine my decision. I regarded this as a fairly safe thing to do, because I was quite certain that I was separating from the Air Force for highly rational reasons in pursuit of my goals.

    I sat down with pad and paper, and began listing goals, what I needed to do in order to accomplish them, and then I put these under headings as to whether another four or six years in the Air Force would advance my goals or hinder them. I even included my dislike of military structure and formality into the list as a reason against. I did my best not to weight these in favor of one conclusion or another. I then weighted the various factors to the best of my ability and totaled the scores. I don’t recall the numbers, but it was a substantial balance in favor of another term of service. By my best factoring of the decision, I would be much further along toward my personal goals in six years were I to re-enlist than I would be if I separated and used educational benefits immediately.

    There were two really hard things in this for me. First, I had to admit that I had been terribly wrong in a decision I thought I had made quite rationally. Second, I had to admit that and go sign papers. But could a reasonably rational person do otherwise? Well, I did all that, severed the additional six, and then separated, and I have never regretted it, nor have I regretted separating at the ten year mark. (At that point it was either plan for 20+ or get out.)

    A few years after this a psychologist told me that people do not generally make decisions for the reasons they profess. Rather, they make decisions emotionally and then rationalize them. He said this isn’t universal, that there are varying amounts of rationality that are pre-decision, but that it is very common. I don’t know how right he is, but I was immediately reminded of my reenlistment, and while I have rarely put a decision to that kind of testing, I know there are other times when I feel very strongly that I want to do X while I know that rationally the best choice is Y. I have also observed many friends who will express one decision, but based on every expression they have made themselves, it appears that they would make a different choice if they thought the decision through in terms of their goals. (Neither of these have the faintest bit of scientific pretensions–they are absolutely personal and anecdotal and should be taken as such.)

    Of course, the follow up to making a decision or forming an intention is action. I’ll illustrate with myself again. I frequently forget things. Just about anything I am doing becomes my current total focus, and I’ll forget anything else. For example, had I promised my wife to be at lunch in five minutes just before I started writing this post, it is unlikely that I would remember that promise until I finished the post. Do note here that having thought about that issue, I know that my wife is at her work, and I’m here in my home office, thus while I may have forgotten many things, that is not one of them!

    Several people have informed me that the things I forget must not have very much priority to me, otherwise I wouldn’t forget them. I have put that to the test recently since at the persuasion of wife and many friends, when I recently replaced my cell phone I replaced it with a PDA. This thing lets me easily enter lists, and it rings alarms when things are due. It’s easy enough for me to enter data so that I generally don’t forget to put stuff in the phone. (My previous phone had a simple scheduler, but it was clumsy to use.) The other evening I had completely forgotten about a meeting I wanted to attend. It was Monday night. In church on Sunday the pastor mentioned a meeting at the church. It was something I would want to be at. I wrote a note on a slip of paper and put it in the PDA after church. The PDA dinged Monday night giving me about a half an hour to get to the meeting. Using my memory, I would have missed that meeting and I would have regretted it. Despite my dislike for sudden shifts of direction, I attended. The PDA helped me carry out my actual intentions based on what I hope was a rational assessment of where I should be.

    My point here is that intentions, even quite firm intentions are not always easy to put into action. It’s not that I want to miss lunch or dinner when I tell my wife I’ll be back in 10 minutes and wind up engrossed in some piece of writing an hour later. I do recognize that the human body must eat. But other factors intervene.

    My overall point is that between our perceiving reasons for action and the action we actually carry out there can be a considerable gap, so much so that we might not even recognize the connections if they didn’t happen right in our own brains, and sometimes not even then.

    Politically, this apparently extends to opinion polls and voting. CQ Politics has an interesting article, Polls: Can’t Always Trust Them, But Can’t Live Without Them, that discusses something very similar in voting. How well do voters know their own intentions? Do they know for sure whether they are going to vote? Do they really know how likely it is that they will change their minds? I would add that the less each decision is based on conscious, rational factors, the more likely the voter might either be wrong, or might be swayed by similar non-rational or irrational factors.

    Of course this doesn’t aim at any particular group of voters. We’re all capable of such rationalization or failure to carry through both in politics and in the rest of our lives. I just think it is both interesting and valuable to think about how we think.

  • Genesis 2:15-17: Nature and Duration of Evil

    This is a short note on some implications of evil based on a reading of Genesis 2:15-17, which is the first mention of anything even potentially out of order with God’s wonderful new world.

    I’ve heard hundreds of arguments in church, including the question of why God would put just one tree in the garden and then tell the first couple not to eat. Why put such temptation in front of inexperienced people? These extend even to asking what type of fruit it was that the tree bore. Those seem to me to miss the point. There was a possibility to do wrong. When one combines the concepts “choice” and “good” the possibility of a choice that is not-good, or bad, is implied.

    Here are a few quick points:

    1. Potential evil was clearly part of the creation plan.
      The presence of the tree indicates options, and it is the tree of the knowledge (perhaps experiential knowledge) of that evil, so it suggests that there were many options, or at least more than one, for making wrong choices. This also argues in favor of a completely symbolic understanding of the tree. Whatever it is that Adam and Eve did, it was not a matter of eating fruit arbitrarily forbidden to them.
    2. Death was already either known or theoretically knowable.
      If nobody has died, or the nature of death is not known, what is the value of a death sentence. If physical death already existed, then it is not by nature evil. Either some spiritual death, or a specific hold of death (Hebrews 2:14-15) such as fear, is meant by the threat.
    3. A broad range of possible good choices exist/existed.
      There are many trees, but only one forbidden. Good may be more diverse than we have often thought.

    It seems to me that some of the most literalistic interpretations of Genesis may result from not reading the text all that carefully, and passing over the difficulties of one’s point of view.

  • Energion.com Domain Problems

    I don’t know how many folks here go to Energion.com, but I know a number come here from there. It is my original domain from before I published books. It has a number of essays from my pre-blog days and now serves more as an aggregator and central hub. Unfortunately, we had some problem with the domain record. Yes, I paid my bill. The name servers changed, though it doesn’t appear to be a highjack. In any case, I expect that domain to be accessible again sometime in the next 24 hours or so.

    This domain (energionpubs.com) is not impacted by this issue.

  • Inerrancy: Nuance or Discard?

    Through a Glass Darkly has a good note titled Nuancing Inerrancy as a follow-up to this post on Ancient Hebrew Poetry. I’m not sure what order to read them in; just read them. (There are more links to follow!)

    I would add only that I have a hard time using the term “inerrancy” in this way, because it only means what these gentlemen say it does to a relatively small group of people. Now the small group includes generally those most expert on the topic, but if you go to just about any church and say “inerrancy” this is not what the people will understand you to be saying.

    That’s the problem with words–people use them, and they change. Thus while I applaud the definition, and will jump on the bandwagon if any signs of movement occur, that doesn’t seem likely at least where I work.

  • Florida Science Standards Petition Comments

    Wesley Elsberry has posted his comment on the petition for the Florida science standards at The Panda’s Thumb. If you haven’t signed, consider signing and commenting.

  • Myth of Galileo

    Joe Carter is debunking the Galileo myth. And a pretty reasonable debunking it is. I’ve read quite a few debunkings of the myth before, and such things are rather important, considering some versions of the story. I’m pretty sure someone in elementary school told me that Galileo was condemned for saying that the earth was round. That surely came from someone who misunderstood Columbus (who’s real issue was the circumference of the earth) and then confused him with Galileo. What stays in place through all these versions is that Galileo was discovering something new, and the church wasn’t anxious for him to do that.

    Now Carter’s debunking, while quite good, and while drawing some very appropriate lessons, reminded me of an incident in my freshman year of college. A sociology professor who professed communism challenged me in class when I quoted 66,000,000 people killed in the process of bringing communism to the Soviet Union. I forget who calculated the number of the details, but Solzhenitsyn cites a statistician who calculated that number in The Gulag Archipelago. My teacher, every mindful of defending good communists everywhere said, “Oh, that’s greatly exaggerated. More likely there were only 40,000,000.”

    The comparison here is not views of the cosmos versus killing people, but rather the idea that diminishing the damage tends to make people forget the essence of the claim. If one’s claim is exaggerated (or wrong), then even if a great wrong was done, people will start to ignore it. They remember that it was exaggerated. In the case of Galileo, I often see the result of debunking. “Oh,” says someone, “he was not treated as badly as the story indicates.” And they decide to give the Catholic hierarchy of the time a free pass.

    But when exaggeration is removed, Galileo’s lack of additional evidence is considered, and any amount of obnoxious behavior on his part is factored in, we still have a scientist who was told by the church to shut up. That’s not good. Now we need to keep in mind the times as well. Comparing the behavior of the church of the time with modern standards of academic freedom is an injustice to some extent as well.

    But as a Christian, I still have to ask if we shouldn’t be better than that. After all, we claim divine guidance. We claim great hope. I would not demand that reformation come instantly, or that the church be wonderfully far ahead of the world around it. I’d just ask that it be a little bit ahead, or more accurately a little bit better. (“Ahead” begs the question of whether we’re going the right way!) The same challenge faces the church today. Are we really doing anything but following cultural trends? In many cases, I think we are not.

    There is a further problem with views of Galileo, and that is the unfortunate idea that the Bible should be used to provide or to test scientific answers. I will repeat what I have said before–there is nothing in the Bible that cannot be adequately understood with the cosmology of the ancient near east. There is no advance of physical science provided by divine revelation. I would ask anyone who disagrees to point to such a thing in scripture. Testing cosmology by scripture is a colossal waste of time. We should no by now that theology is not the best approach to knowledge of the physical world.

    So that leaves me with two elements of the Galileo incident. First, there is a church (and state) that believes it can put someone on trial because they either believe what is false or are obnoxious. Second, that church is testing such ideas by a standard and using methods that are not capable of producing accurate results. Both of those things are terribly bad. They’re not friendly to science.

    Let’s not replace the myth of Galileo the pure and righteous punished by the church with a myth of a church behaving in a fully reasonable fashion. There was still an inquisition, the decision was still wrong, the place and the method was inappropriate to their purpose, and the decision made turned out, not surprisingly to be on the wrong side of history.

    Why does the myth persist? Simple. The victors write the history, and Galileo happened to be right, and the pope was wrong. He should have just sucked it up and let Galileo insult him. It would have provided a better legacy.

  • Is This Pastor Going to Hell?

    According to an e-mail received by the Rev. John Shuck, he is. And what is the great sin for which he may already be damned? He has signed the Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science. Thus, according to the letter, he is teaching a “damning doctrine,” and may actually be reprobate. On the off-chance he’s not, the writer does pray that God will grant him repentance.

    Now I have to just take a short side trip through the joys of soteriology, particularly views of the atonement and justification. Apparently, according to some, while you are justified by faith, apart from works, and you cannot earn your salvation through any good works, you can quite easily be damned by misunderstanding obscure points of doctrine. Apparently God’s grace is sufficient to cover murder, for example, but balks at failure to comprehend the true nature of the fall. This “salvation by correct doctrine” seems to me to me a new and damnable (gotta love that word!) form of salvation by works, only now the works are intellectual rather than spiritual. Pity the poor person who simply can’t work his mind around the precise doctrinal definitions required before one can receive God’s grace.

    In any case, there is one other thing on which I wanted to comment. Rev. Shuck sees here an indication of the reason some people are so fiercely determined to make us accept Genesis literally as some kind of literal history of the cosmos. It’s because death, according to this view, must result from sin, so how could you have evolution before human sin? After all, it’s survival of the fittest, meaning some die, and that’s anathema (another word I can’t resist after reading the letter) to some Christians.

    But here is where many Christians need to pay close attention. There is, in fact, only one of the many interpretations of Genesis that has a perfect world, into which physical death of all types is introduced by sin–young earth creationism. Other very common Christian interpretations, even among evangelicals, allow physical death before the fall. They have to. Where, for example, could an old earth creationist imagine fossils to come from? Old earth creationists aren’t that stupid–they believe that living creatures died before the fall. Many of them, by the simple expedient of thinking “spiritual/eternal” when they read of the death that followed sin, don’t have any problem with the fall at all.

    Unfortunately many Christians who hold these various views other than young earth creationism are not aware of the various interpretations, and aren’t aware that young earth creationists aren’t arguing their view–that God is simply the creator, however he worked–but rather are arguing for a 6,000 year old earth, and some incomprehensible variety of ecology in which no living thing died. There’s a mental experiment for you. Design an ecology in which every living creature continues to live forever, and yet reproduces.

    I suspect that the problem of the atonement does drive a great deal of creationism, and the entire debate would probably become a bit less contentious if the young earth crowd was not involved. Nonetheless it is interesting to see such obscure points of doctrine create such heat.