Thinking Christian

EurekAlert does it again!

Would someone please explain to me how this article merits this headline???

Homosexual behavior due to genetics and environmental factors

From the conclusion of a paper out of the University of Virginia (emphasis added):

This brief provides an array of evidence indicating that religion is an answer to the male problematic—that is, the tendency of fathers to become detached, emotionally or physically, from their children and the mothers of their children. I find that fathers who are religious, and who have partners who are religious, are—on average—more likely to be happily married, to be engaged and affectionate parents, and to get and stay married to the mothers of their children. As a consequence, religious fathers and husbands are much less likely to fall prey to the male problematic of late modernity.

[Link: Center for Marriage and Families » Blog Archive » Is Religion an Answer? Marriage, Fatherhood, and the Male Problematic]

The “male problematic” was defined earlier in the paper:

One of the most important consequences of the family revolution of the last half-century—a revolution marked by dramatic increases in divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and cohabitation—is that ever larger numbers of men are becoming disconnected from family life. From New York to New Orleans, from San Francisco to Seattle, more and more men in the United States are living apart from the children they helped to bring into this world. This growing disconnect between men and families has been aptly called the “male problematic” by University of Chicago theologian Don Browning.

This entry joins others showing positive outcomes associated with faith. Please note the disclaimer there (at the end of the page) regarding how this information should be interpreted.

There are two groups of people in the world: those who divide the world into two groups of people, and those who do not.

No, really, there are two groups of people in the world with respect to moral opinions: moral realists and moral relativists. Broadly speaking, moral realists believe that there are at least some moral values that are objective. Objective means (as William Lane Craig says) that these values would hold as valid or true even if nobody on earth agreed with them. Moral relativists, in contrast, generally hold that all moral values are generated or constructed out of persons’ or cultures’ beliefs. They may believe there is a certain kind of reality to moral values, that values are not arbitrary; but this reality is the product of individual or social beliefs, not some ultimate source beyond human culture.

The following is a True/False Quiz that anyone can take. Do you consider the following statements to be true or false?

1. (T/F) All moral values are entirely constructed or produced out of persons’ or cultures’ beliefs.

If you answered False, that’s it for you on this quiz. If you answered True, please continue:

2. (T/F) Let us assume that everybody in some cultural grouping G believes that some behavior B expresses a good and valid moral value. (It doesn’t really matter what B is.) For that culture, at that time and in those conditions, B is good.

3. (T/F) Another cultural group H may disagree with G on this, but nevertheless for GB is still good; for cultures may validly hold different opinions on moral values. H’s disagreement with G does not make B bad or wrong in itself, it only makes it bad or wrong for H.

4. (T/F) Suppose there is no group H that disagrees that B is good. Then everyone would be in group G, and would agree that B is good. For that time and in those conditions at least, B is therefore good for everybody. It is a universal good in the sense that it is universally shared by all persons then living, though not in the sense that its value comes from somewhere beyond the persons who have made it a value.

5. (T/F) In most cultures of the world, the Holocaust of WW II is regarded as having been a severe moral evil.

6. (T/F) If, however, Hitler had won the war, and if he (and his followers) had been able to exterminate or brainwash everyone who thought the Holocaust was evil, then the situation would be like that of (4), where every person in the world agreed that the Holocaust was morally good. (This example also follows one given by W.L. Craig.)

7. (T/F) In that case, the Holocaust would be correctly regarded by the remaining population as having been morally good.

Self-check: compare your answers to (4) and (7).

We’re not done yet, though…

8. (T/F) Some remaining persons (call them Group H again) may think it was morally evil to massacre and/or brainwash the dissenters. Those persons themselves (the members of Group H) could conceivably be brainwashed and/or killed by the others (Group G), so that every remaining person would then be a member of group G and would believe the following:

(a) To exterminate the Jews was a morally good goal.
(b) To kill and/or brainwash those who disagreed with (a) was morally good.
(c) To kill and/or brainwash those who dissented from (b) was also morally good.

9. (T/F) With no Group H, and with every person alive believing that 8(a), 8(b), and 8(c) were morally good, then those moral beliefs would indeed be universally good, taking “universal” as described in (4).

10 (T/F) In other words, relativism could coherently lead to a possible world, as philosophers term it, in which the Holocaust was morally good, and where brainwashing or killing off all possible dissent was also morally good–universally so, in fact. This moral good, as suggested in (9), would rest on a much stronger social foundation than, say, the current common Western belief that slavery is wrong. It would in fact be more clearly good than current beliefs that slavery is wrong.

Self-check: compare your answers to (9) and (10) with your answer to (4).

And that suggests the following final item in our short quiz:

11. (T/F) It would violate a solidly established universal moral norm, and would rightly be regarded as reprehensible, to suggest that is wrong to kill dissenters just for believing that persons ought to have the freedom of their beliefs.

From this you see one reason I am not a moral relativist.

As a writer, I often enjoy Language Log simply for what I learn there about language, whether it’s connected to topics I’m involved with or not. Once in a while, though, they focus on one of my hot buttons: science journalism. On their blog they call it “The Language of Science,” on ways that science journalism is not always (ahem) quite what it ought to be.

Today Arnold Zwicky has taken New Scientist seriously to task for reporting that the “gay” sexual orientation is determined at birth. The science doesn’t support the conclusion, he says. Understand that Language Log is no right-wing, fundamentalist (or whatever stereotype you like to name) shill group. I don’t think any of the several Language Log authors have made a case for faith. Some of them seem to be agnostic or atheistic, based on what they’ve written.

What Zwicky complains about is that some reports on this research have had little connection with what the studies actually demonstrated. It’s the science, not the ideology, that drives his analysis. Says Zwicky,

First we get an (unsupportable) essentialist interpretation of the statistics, and then this feeds into some vulgar phrenology…

[Link: Language Log » Gay or straight, it’s decided at birth]

It’s hard to avoid the inference that somebody else’s conclusions are being driven by their ideology.

Missions is the most crucial thing taking place on earth today. It is the whole point of human history. And it is at its most exciting point in history, when the conclusion, the completion of the task is in sight. It is at the center of God’s heart, and thus it belongs at the center of every Christian’s heart. The progress is most encouraging, though obviously there remains much to be prayed for, much to be done.

When it’s all over and the celebration happens, will you be there as one who gave it your all, or as one who sat on the bench and watched the rest of the team win the game? What kind of celebration would you want to have?

Just over four years ago I delivered a talk at Seaford Baptist Church on “God’s Heart for Missions.” It’s not a new talk, but I’m getting newly involved in podcasting so I have decided to post it now.

 

 God's Heart for Missions [35:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

There’s somethin’ strange goin’ on here. This is the third time I’ve had the privilege of hosting the Christian Carnival. The first time, my blog broke down completely just about the time I was scheduled to write and post the Carnival. It was completely inaccessible for reading and for administrating for several hours. Well, that happened again yesterday, and it took about eight hours of work on my end with help from tech support at the web host to solve it this time. Is there a pattern here?

Well, I’m not going to read too much into that, and I’m certainly glad to be hosting this time! But these incidents remind me of a song called “Broken Things,” written many years ago by a Campus Crusade for Christ musician who had taken a tour in the Philippines. Somebody she saw there, on a street or in a shop, was looking to buy broken things so he could repair and re-sell them. In her song she asked the question, “Do you know one who buys broken things?” And the answer of course was yes: we know Jesus Christ. He came to pay the price for our sins, in a figurative sense to buy broken people, to give them life, heal them, and set them free. That includes you and me.

Everything in the Christian life is about knowing and celebrating the One who did that for us, or about learning what it needs to be a broken person being healed and entering into a new life, or helping others understand how Christ does this. So this is the “Broken Things” edition of the Christian Carnival, with an emphasis on how we get “repaired.”

Learning About Christ and His Word

• Anne, blogging at Weekend Fisher, asks an interesting question about the Bible:

How much does a word cloud tell you about the main point of a writing? Have you ever seen a word cloud for one of the gospels?

See one outcome at Gospel of Mark: Word Cloud.

• Jeremy Pierce presents Contemporary Units of Measurement in Bible Translations posted at Parableman. Translation isn’t such a bad thing — it’s one of the heart strategies of missions, after all!

Learning About and Living Our New Life in Christ

• Free Money Finance tells about how we often “fail to realize that our money is not our own. It is God’s money and we are each just a steward of a certain amount.” Also in More Thoughts on Tithing and Giving: why we may be afraid to give, and why it’s good under God to give nevertheless.

• Richard H. Anderson presents Forgiveness of Sins according to Luke, at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos, including this important note about Christ’s redeeming our brokenness:

Without the salvation historical work of Jesus Christ, forgiveness is impossible, but without human μετάνοια (repentance), it can not be realized.

• Jennifer in OR, at Diary of 1, recommends, Don’t ask for just a few. Instead, with a message from the life of Elisha, she says,

…. Seek help from wise people, follow God’s precise instructions even if they don’t make sense, and watch the blessings flow. He cares for you.

• Simplyeddie says we can all be Making a Difference, especially by living with love and by concentrating on what’s really important. It’s posted at Simple Life In Christ.

• At Bounded Irrationality, Econ Grad Student Doug speaks of Sound and Fury:

When do our actions have meaning? When do our lives have meaning? I look where the Bible addresses those questions and the secular view on those questions.

• Sherry Early reviews a “Weird. Nightmare-ish. Imaginative. Chestertonian.” novel, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton [one of my favorite authors, though I haven't read this book yet]. Her review is posted at Semicolon.

• Thom speaks of celebrations — and distortions of celebrations — Wedding, a Microcosm of Community See it at Everyday Liturgy.

• This week at Light Along the Journey John decides that after toning up his body with his “Wii fit” he wants a video game (or maybe something else?) to tone up his soul in his post “I Want a Wii Life.” He realizes, though, that he can’t fix everything up quite the same way!

• Henry Neufeld combines story and message in Justine and the Prophets, posted at Jevlir Caravansary:

The God-Talk Club was gathered at the cafe, and everyone was fairly quiet….

They end up in a pretty fascinating conversation about a “prophet” showing up at church.

• Jody Neufeld builds a message around a different story, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, at Jody’s Devotionals. Sometimes what looks weak isn’t broken at all:

They thought they had found Daniel’s weakness. He was a man of faith in an unseen god. Has anyone ever suggested to you that “having faith in God is for weak-minded people”?

Helping Others Know and Understand Christ

• Theresa Twogood at Olin e-Publishing will let you wonder for a while what she means by A New and Unique Philosophy?, but I’ll give you a hint: some attempts at repair only hide what’s broken, they don’t really fix it.

• Elementaryhistoryteacher takes note of some friends who have left home to help others in Peru learn about Christ. She asks, Would You…Could You Do This? at Got Bible?.

• Brian Russell of the Real Meal Blog offers Illustrating Missional (Re)Alignment. This essay explores the need for Christ followers to realign continually with the mission of God in the World.

• Rodney Olsen presents Antony Flew says There Is A God posted at RodneyOlsen.net:

The world’s most notorious atheist has looked at the evidence and has changed his mind. His book, There Is A God, outlines what he understands as the compelling case for the existence of God.

• And finally, my own entry from Thinking Christian is about Truth in the Fire: C.S. Lewis and the Pursuit of Truth Today. The very concept of Truth is under attack, and it matters greatly to our life in Christ and to our witness.

Truth In the Fire
I have written appreciatively twice of Dallas Willard lately. Now I turn to his article, Truth in the Fire: C.S. Lewis and Pursuit of Truth Today: Publications: The Independent Institute. Originally delivered as a lecture ten years ago at the C.S. Lewis Centennial at Oxford University, this paper springboards from Lewis’s understanding of Truth, and attacks being made upon it in Lewis’s time, to a more contemporary discussion of the same issue. (Dallas Willard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California.)

Everything we believe, everything we understand about the world, hinges on this issue. A colleague of mine has written a book (now out of print), God Is the Issue. I do not intend to say that Truth is above God, or more important than God. But God is consistently identified in his Word as the source of Truth, and as Truth himself (2 Samuel 22:32, Psalm 18:30, John 5:31-32, John 7:18, John 14:6, 1 John 5:20).

The Truth that is in God is multi-faceted: it involves his personal faithfulness, his consistency, his keeping his word, his integrity. It also involves what is technically, somewhat coldly perhaps, called propositional truth: that which allows us to affirm or to deny that something is in fact true in a meaningful sense (see Deuteronomy 18:22, 2 Samuel 7:28, John 19:35, Acts 26:25, 2 Corinthians 7:14).

Propositional truth itself is “In the Fire,” the phrase Willard uses in the title of his paper. Postmodern-leaning Christians often dismiss it: “How can you reduce the truth of God to mere propositions?” But that of course is a straw man. To insist on the reality of propositional truth is not to deny the other various aspects of God’s truth, any more than to insist that birds can fly is to deny they can sing. God can be (and is) personally faithful, at the same time that statements regarding him (or other subjects) may be true or false.

Rumors of Relativity
Of course the question is not raised only in regard to God. Propositional truth is denied on general terms, or is accepted only on the understanding that it is not objective. Truth is relative, they say. As Willard puts it:

In the face of present attitudes, however, even earnestness about truth—also about goodness and beauty—is definitely uncool. It might be tolerated in a Freshman. But he or she would be expected to wise up quickly, and might pay a stiff price for not doing so. The idea of devoting one’s life to truth, goodness or beauty is now quaint if not ridiculous, on the campus as in the corporation. They are not considered to be objective realities against which human life is or can be measured.

To encourage you to read the whole article, I’ll pick up a few points from it. First, on this belief that all truth is relative, Willard disagrees, to put it mildly. I stand with him.

All this puts us in position to see that, while belief is relative—a fact or statement is believed only if someone believes it—truth is not relative. One believes something, one does not truth it or fact it. Again, we can and should experiment with this. Try getting your car to run by believing gas is in your tank. Or by also enlisting others to believe it, or by generating a social movement in favor of it.

Pilate’s Question
But what do we mean by “truth?” Willard dares (such audacity!) to suggest an explanation, including,

When the object of our belief or statement is as we believe or state it to be, when it “matches up” to that object in the familiar way already indicated by cases, our belief or statement is true. Truth is just this characteristic of “matching up.” Otherwise our belief or statement is false. Truth and falsity are, then, objective properties of beliefs and statements….

For a belief, thought or statement to be true is simply for its subject matter to be as it is represented, or as it is held to be, in that belief, thought or statement. When we confirm that a hitherto unconfirmed belief or statement is true, we do not create the relation (correspondence) it actually has to what it is about, any more that we create the fit of a wrench to a bolt head by placing the wrench on the bolt head, or the fit of a door to a frame by putting the door in the frame….

Moreover, truth, as we have seen in the case of fact and reality, is totally unyielding in the face of belief, desire, tradition and will. There is no such thing as a belief or statement whose quality of truth or falsity is modified by mere belief or disbelief, desire or aversion, habit or tradition or social practice or professional opinion, or will and intent. We state it once again: belief is relative, as are our perceptions, but truth is not. Truth is a relation, a “correspondence,” but not one that depends upon belief or attitude….

A dignitary such as Pontius Pilate or a university professor can well say, rhetorically, “What is truth?” But that is never accepted as a response from a child being interrogated about vanished cookies, nor will a child accept it as an explanation of a broken promise. They know what truth is very well, even though, as they also know, it is not easy to determine in some cases. —Is it true there is a Santa Claus, for example, or a tooth fairy?

Is that so complicated, now? Well, of course there are issues attending this matter of truth, which Willard acknowledges in his paper. But the central foundation of it was never challenged for century upon century. It was only when men began to doubt everything except the evidence of their senses that they began to doubt such a thing as truth exists. Intuitively it is obvious even to a child; but intuitions don’t boil in a beaker, and they don’t generate a satisfyingly measurable electrical field, so the empiricists thought they must not be real. Never mind that (as Willard points out) they could not determine they were unreal without depending on their being real.

Why It Matters So
And why is this such a crucial matter? Simply this: without the ability to speak a true statement, to affirm a true proposition, then one cannot say things like,

• “God is love.”
• “Jesus Christ is the Word of God become flesh, full of grace and truth.”
• “Eternal life is found in Jesus Christ.”

These things cannot either be affirmed or denied. They are without content. They may be opinions, but they can be neither right nor wrong.

Further, without the ability to affirm something as true (even potentially), the following cannot be said, even to disagree with them:

• Opinions about God are without content.
• They may be opinions, but they can neither be right nor wrong.
• These things cannot be said, even to disagree with them.
• Nothing in fact can be affirmed as actually true, or denied as being actually false.

I hope you’ve noticed this is turning self-referential, as the philosophers put it. A self-referential statement is one like, “The sentence I am now writing is ten words long.” That happens to be true, if I counted right. Here’s another self-referential statement. “The statement I am now writing is false.” That one is not only false, it is incoherent, impossible; it cannot be true unless it is false; it cannot be false without being true. A better description for it is nonsense.

In a similar sense, if all truth is relative then the last several bulleted statements above are true, but if they are true propositions, then there are no true propositions. They are in the same condition as “This statement is false.” If they are true, then they are false.

Desperate Separation
One who denies truth denies all affirmations, all denials, all discourse. The result is not only to remain desperately separated from God, also to create a whole new kind of separation from each other. We can talk to each other, but your words and mine have no common referent, no meaning in common. You speak your language and I mine, but we can have no shared understanding: for there is no objective reality out there for us to share in.

It is a philosophy of absurdity. More grievous than that, though, it is a philosophy of utter alienation.

Hat tip (three weeks ago, saved until I had time to work on it): Victor Reppert

Jason Rosenhouse finds this, from Kenneth Miller’s Only A Theory, to be lacking:

Turning our attention to the special case of our own species, we can be fairly confident, just as Gould tells us, that our peculiar natural history would not repeat, and that self-awareness would not emerge from the primates. Indeed, we would have no reason to suppose that primates, mammals, or even vertebrates would emerge in a second running of the tape. But as life reexplored adaptive space, could we be certain that our niche would not be occupied? I would argue that we could be almost certain that it would be — that eventually evolution would produce an intelligent, self-aware, reflective creature endowed with a nervous system large enough to solve the very same questions that we have, and capable of discovering the very process that produced it, the process of evolution.

[Link: EvolutionBlog : My Review of Only a Theory]

Miller, a strong opponent of Intelligent Design, takes the position that God and evolution are compatible features of the universe. He particularly defended, in Finding Darwin’s God, the idea that evolution is undirected. Kenneth claims to believe in Christianity (he’s a Roman Catholic) but also believes the course evolution has taken was not guided by God. I’ve been scratching my head over that one since I read Finding Darwin’s God. The Bible is chock-full of statements of God planning things out well in advance (Ephesians 2:10, for example). To believe in undirected evolution is to believe in something other than the biblical view of God and his relationship with humans.

Rosenhouse is no theist and no friend of Intelligent Design, but he is right to question Miller about this:

Actually, to argue otherwise is simply to acknowledge that Darwinian natural selection driving animals to fill adaptive niches is not the only thing that goes on during evolution. It was not just the relentless march of natural selection that made possible our appearance on this planet. There were also numerous mass extinctions to open up large numbers of new niches….

I don’t agree with Rosenhouse’s full conclusions, but it sure seems that he’s being more consistent to his underlying theory than Miller is. Either accept that God exists and cares about life on earth, or set aside the whole idea of God entirely. Miller seems to be trying to keep one foot in Christian theism and another foot unguided, undirected evolution. But that’s like trying to keep one foot on the dock and one foot on the rowboat–when the rowboat’s mooring lines have been thrown off, and the current is flowing away from the dock.

Here’s one more sign of God’s surprising work around the world:

A booming Bible industry is turning the world’s biggest atheist nation into the world’s largest supplier of the Good Book.

[Link: Bibles are big business in China - Los Angeles Times]

Okay, this is going to be a challenge. I’m on a rather small airplane, and the passenger in front of me has leaned back so that I can’t open up my computer enough to be able to see the screen as I type. I really wasn’t intending to get my computer out on this flight. But I was reading Dallas Willard, and I was just struck by something I need to write. There will be typos, but I know I’ll get a chance to rewrite this before I post it [which I have now done, and I hope the typos are all cleared away].

For several weeks I’ve sensed something has gone off track with this blog. I’ve just figured out what it is.

I’ve been reading the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, as expounded by Dallas Willard in the Divine Conspiracy. I quoted from this book a few days ago, on the topic of loving one’s neighbor, and I noted Willard’s conclusion that the question is not, “Who qualifies to be my neighbor?” but, “To whom will I be a neighbor?”

Fast-forward a few blog posts and you have my restatement of my discussion guidelines. What I intended to portray there was that discussions ought to be friendly, good-natured, and kind. But I realize now that in the “back porch” analogy I used there, I contradicted what I had learned about being a neighbor. I said, in effect, “There are some people out there to whom I will not be a neighbor, and to whom I will not be hospitable.”

I made the quality of the argument or the discussion the major thing. This was wrong. I have been in error in d. Following that standard, I’ve made decisions about who may contribute here, and those decisions made sense under the standard I had set; but the standard was wrong.

I intend now to ensure that the importance of the relationship or of the person (the contributor) will outweigh the importance of the argument.

That is not to say I will contend any less vigorously for truth. It is also not to say there will be no standards for discussion, or that no person will ever be excluded. I’ve revised the comment guidelines slightly just now, but for the most part they say what they have said before. The difference, I hope, will be in the approach and the application.

But I am introducing a new standard which calls for some explanation. (This may come as a surprise to some.) Taking the Bible as guide, there are some persons who cannot expect to be treated with neighborly hospitality on the “back porch.” Two key passages explain it. The first is 1 John 7-11, which is understood by major commentators to be a warning in reference to persons who claim to be followers of Christ but are in fact false teachers:

“Do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.”

(In context of the culture, the “greeting” was not just “hi, how are you” while passing on the sidewalk; it was a significant expression of welcome, an invitation to spend extended time together.) The second relevant passage is 1 Corinthians 5:9-13, where Paul says we certainly ought not to try to disassociate ourselves from persons outside the church who practice various kinds of misdeeds; but we are

“not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.”

(Please note carefully – see verse 5 of the same chapter – that this action is redemptive, not punitive, toward the person in question; it is for the purpose of waking up such persons, in hopes that they will return to godly living and be saved from the destruction of their soul. Other passages supporting this attitude are Matthew 18:15-17 and Galatians 6:1-2, both of which clearly point toward restoration and redemption as their goals.)

Based on the teaching in these two passages, I will quite intentionally apply a separate standard for one group. The “back porch” will welcome all kinds of people, but this welcome does not include those who claim to be followers of Christ yet bring manifestly false teaching about the faith, or who promote or practice wrong practices in Biblical terms.

That means I’m reversing my decision to ban some people from commenting. I ask that in return, you show respect to your fellow visitors here. Please respect also the fact that (as one person reminded me in a private discussion on this) even Christians are under no moral obligation to give everyone a chance to speak at every meeting.

The bottom line: I will continue to contend for the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ; but the importance of the argument is not as great as the importance of the persons who visit here.