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Archive for the ‘Reason’ Category

GOP Primary Debates

08 Sep

FoxNews’ management of the first GOP debate was shameful. From the questions they asked to where they placed the contenders on the stage, everything was geared toward pitting the candidates against each other rather than inquiring what each candidate would do as president.

What I felt was missing was a candidate speaking up in a unifying tone to step above the fray, aside from the traps laid by the moderators and what communicated as petty fights between each other. A candidate to step up and say that all of the candidates would be better than a second term of President Obama, and that all the candidates were in favor of a lower tax burden, less federal regulation, etc. A candidate to speak that they respect the other people on stage, while they think their own distinctives make them better for the position.

Newt had the right tone with the Fox News’ moderators, telling them to stop asking “gotcha” questions, but no one stepped up to elevate all of the candidates.

Last night’s debate was worse as far as moderation. The moderators again pitted candidates against each other. Like Fox News, MSNBC focused on a few candidates where as others (most notably Herman Cain) were essentially ignored. The liberal bias was stronger. For example, Brian Williams asked Perry how he could sleep at night supporting the death penalty, and Williams pointed out that he taken aback that people applauded his mention of Texas executing murderers.

Governors Perry and Romney started with the bickering (and Huntsman tried to join the bickering) which was as unpresidential as when Bachmann and Pawlenty fell into that trap last time. Newt again had the right tone and this time emphasized that any of the candidates would be an improvement and all were united in the majority of policies.  After his comment and the overwhelming applause, the level of discussion was raised up most notably by Perry and Romney.

Here’s the video of the entire debate followed by my take on how everyone did.

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Michele Bachmann – She did not raise above the questions asked of her. When she was asked about whether the president could make gas $2/gallon she focused on the two-dollar price tag rather than talking about what the president can practically do to help energy prices. When asked about drilling in the everglades, she said that we would do it responsibly. A better case would be to say that Americans have proven we are more responsible with the environment but instead we’re paying countries in the middle east but we should bring the business to America to create jobs and have more control over the environmental impact of drilling.

The candidates should be using the questions as a platform to speak directly to the viewer for a few minutes rather than interacting with the moderator. Unfortunately, while her comments are accurate, “$2 gas” and “narco-terrorism” sound extreme and are sound byte fodder. Bachmann was my favored top-tier candidate before the first debate, but has failed to rise up and show presidential control over situations like this debate.

Herman Cain – Cain continues to speak with honesty and clarity, setting him apart from the majority of politicians. He advocated a 9-9-9 tax reform: 9% business flat tax, 9% individual flat tax, and 9% national sales “fair” tax. Combining the flat tax and fair tax is an innovative idea that keeps all the numbers low. Can they really be single-digit rates? I don’t know. Would it stay at 9%? That’s unlikely as politicians always want more money, so it would need to be more difficult to change the tax rates.

I’ve always liked Cain, but his ignorance on foreign policy early in his campaign was refreshingly honest, but not helpful. New contenders entering the race continue to push him lower in the polls, and he has been very good but not stellar enough to rise above.

Ron Paul – Paul again spent some of his allotted time whining about how he wasn’t asked every question. It may not be fair, but whining is a bad cornerstone for a presidential platform. He was a bit conspiratorial, arguing that a border fence would be used to keep American citizens from traveling abroad. Overall Paul looked angry and condescending toward the other candidates, the moderators, and even the audience. He attacked Perry for a positive letter Perry sent to Hillary Clinton before the details HillaryCare were known, at which point Perry pointed out Paul’s letter to Reagan saying he was leaving the Republican party because of him.

Ron Paul’s economic and conservative ideas are great. Unfortunately his let-the-dictators-win and conspiracy views weren’t helping. One of the greatest factors against Paul is the non-thinking aura exuding from his devotees.

Rick “Swagger” Perry – As the newest contender, Perry seemed very comfortable on stage and controlled his own time well. He speaks with more clarity than most politicians, which I respect. He gave Obama credit for ordering the Osama take-out while also calling him a Keynesian. He effectively touted how Texas has created jobs and reduced greenhouse gases.

Mitt Romney – Mitt was better than the first debate where he avoided answering anything specific. He was still very professionally political: vague and non-committal. He advocated things like loving America, creating jobs, changing how we’re economically structured, etc.

Jon “Eyebrows” Huntsman – Huntsman continues to come across as snooty and condescending. He looks great when he smiles, an image which occupied about 2.5 seconds of his time. I was constantly distracted by his eyebrow movements. He declared that evolution and global warming are sciences that are never to be questioned – whether the public-school promoted ideas on these issues are accurate or not, it is the exalting of these things to unquestionable gospel that is most off-putting.

Rick “Grumpy” Santorum – Perhaps he looked like he was constantly scowling because of the lights, or maybe because he was upset that he allowed his campaign manager to put him in a pink tie. His body language was very grump. While he didn’t shoot himself in the foot, Santorum didn’t stand out positively either.

Newt Gingrich – Newt consistently rose above the fray and had the most authoritative presidential tone. He answered questions quickly and announced how he would use the remainder of his time, which he did concisely and professionally. He was far and away the most presidential of the candidates and wasn’t pushed around by the moderators.

Unfortunately, Newt has a number of factors against him from his history of broken marriages to his apparent age and and earlier near-collapse of his campaign staff.

While it may not realistic, this debate left me hoping for a ticket combining two names from: Gingrich, Perry, Cain.

 
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Posted in Politics, Reason

 

How to Fail at Arguing Revisited

14 Apr
YouTube Preview Image

Some time ago I wrote a series of posts about how people fail at arguing. I’m not saying that I never fail at arguing, but I try not to. There is an objective truth. Through study, thought, and dialog, we ought to be moving closer to that truth. Failing at arguing is usually disrespectful to others and works toward destroying the movement toward truth.

In “How to Fail at Arguing #4” I wrote about the argument “That just doesn’t make sense.” Today there was another sighting of this argument right here on the SecondJon blog!

Evidently not a long time reader of my blog, Thad left a comment last night failing in this way on my post about Jason Gray’s song that re-defines what it means to love God away from it’s biblical meaning. Thad wrote:

This comment thread blows my mind. The song could scarcely be more clear. The fact that it’s causing this sort of non-sensical dissension is going a long way toward proving his point I think. Some of these comments make it seem like folks are going out of their way to deliberately misunderstand the song. Wow. Just wow.

I’ve never seen the benefit of this style of argument: You disagree with me, therefore you’re nonsensical. You’re so dumb and I’m so brilliant, I can’t bear to bring myself to lower my mind to try to understand you.

It reminds me of an early scene of a movie I walked out of because of the crass humor – Anchor Man. Various characters are arguing about something and Steve Carell’s character yells “I don’t know what we’re yelling about!” In the end, it just makes him look like an idiot for yelling about not understanding what the other guys are saying.

For the benefit of others you are interacting, and for the benefit of firming up or refining what you think, it is worth the effort to figure out where someone else is coming from. How could you ever convince someone else that they’re wrong when you refuse to put any work into understanding what they think?

In addition to subverting any constructive conversation, it’s intellectually lazy.

If I say something that doesn’t make sense to you, think about it, ask for clarification. If you simply respond “you’re being non-sensical,” all you’re saying is that you’re lazy and it’s not worth continuing the conversation with you because you’ll pretend to or try to not understand. It’s the equivalent of plugging your ears and shouting “I CAN’T HEAR YOU, LA LA LA!”

 
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Posted in How to Fail at Arguing, personal, Reason

 

Keep the Democrats in my uterus?

13 Apr
Protest Sign: Keep your Boehner out of my uterus!

Protest Sign: Keep your Boehner out of my uterus!

The signs are back. Boehner, speaker of the house, wanted to remove federal funding of abortion from the budget as one of the cuts. The thinking goes something like this:

If someone wants to stop spending tax-payer dollars on killing an unborn yet scientifically distinct human life, it’s an invasion of someone else’s rights. They should not only have the right to take this human life, but you should pay for it through your taxes.

Where was the outburst of anger when Obama, Pelosi, and Reid rammed through the Obama health care mandate? This gave more government control over every aspect of health, where was the liberal outcry that government should stay out of our bodies?

Evidently, these protesters want Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi in their uterus and John Boehner out. They want legislation out of their uterus, but they want government-paid medical equipment in there scrubbing it. The signs seem like it’s a charge against big government intervention but the argument is the opposite. The sign would more accurately read: “Big government needs to be encouraging and funding abortion.” Statistically Planned Parenthood targets the poor, and a higher percentage of minorities are persuaded to abortion than whites. If the goal was to rid America of poor an brown folks, abortion would be the way to go. In fact, that’s why Planned Parenthood was started – to “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by rectifying “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit.’” Perhaps the sign should more accurately read:

Big government needs to be encouraging and funding abortion for the lower class and people with brown skin.

I’ve likely severely offended many readers, particularly if they found this article from a web search. Abortion is a highly charged issue for a few reasons:

  1. For lack of measurable results, the feminist movement pinned their success to the legalization and subsequently federal funding of abortion. The entire feminist push in our culture became focused not on celebrating and valuing what women do, but in promoting abortion because it was a situation unique to women (making it a woman’s issue) and along with more freely available contraceptives, claimed to free up women to have consequence-free sex just like men.
  2. Abortion is highly personal and highly emotional. Women who find themselves considering the option are in a huge crisis where the options seem like death of the child or suicide of self. If they keep the child their life feels like it will be destroyed, and they may not feel much more hope for the baby. With the political and cultural push for and funding of abortion, it’s not surprising that women make this choice. We’re paying their doctors to do it!

 

Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote an article about pregnancy centers a few years ago. Most disturbing to me are the statistics that it’s overwhelmingly those with wealth that want funding for Planned Parenthood to be used for providing abortions for poorer Americans. The rich are paying for abortion to be promoted for the poor who don’t want it. Here’s an exerpt:

Those who provide alternatives to abortion believe that pregnancy is just one facet of the woman’s larger and more complex life. They believe she is not best served by treating her as merely a polluted uterus in need of a good scrubbing. Her life is tangled with the life of her child growing within, woven with the lives of the child’s father, with her own parents, friends and co-workers in a tapestry of lives. To remove the child is to cut a hole in the tapestry, by literally cutting into human flesh, tearing the child apart and tearing the mother’s heart. Unplanned pregnancy is not one problem, but a host of problems, great and small; pregnancy care providers try to solve them, one at a time.

Problem pregnancy is associated frequently with poverty, and Planned Parenthood selects the poorer neighborhoods; it is popularly believed that abortion is the best solution for the poor. At any rate, this belief is popular with those who are not poor. Polls regularly show that those with higher income levels are the most likely to endorse public funding of abortion, a gift that the recipients are not eager to accept. David Gergen, in an editorial written before he joined the Clinton administration, pointed out that a 1992 Reader’s Digest poll discovered “poorer Americans are the most opposed to federal funding [for abortion]. Among those earning less than $15,000 per year, opposition ran 63 to 32 percent against funding, while those making over $60,000 favored it by 57 to 41 percent.” Gergen asks, “Is Clinton listening to the people he wants to help?”

When people offer to help you by giving you money to eliminate your children, there’s an implied message that’s hard to miss. A friend who worked in an abortion referral center stocked a flier which explained how we could reduce our tax burden by helping poor women have abortions; one day a Hispanic client came in, slapped the flier on the counter, and hissed, “This is what you really think of us.” Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an enthusiastic eugenicist who wanted “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by rectifying “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit.’” Planned Parenthood still has great admiration for Sanger, and president Faye Wattleton said a few years ago that the organization is “just following in the footsteps” of its founder.

Two brands of compassion, each offering what they think is best, but one gets the lion’s share of funding. While pregnancy care centers are a woman-to-woman operation, with funds raised in batches through bake sales and small grants, abortion is more lavishly supported from above. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the recipient of impressive grants from a long list of foundations and corporations, from Helena Rubenstein to the Pew Charitable Trusts to the New York Times Company. In a typical year, $125 million was received via Government grants and contracts. Planned Parenthood has fought for federal funding of abortion, and with the expanded provisions of the Hyde Amendment will now be able to charge more abortions to the public purse. Some states, as well, use taxpayer funds to underwrite abortions: in Maryland the bill totals $3 million per year. There is plenty of money from above to eliminate the children of the poor, and little need for bake-sale fundraising from below. The director of Planned Parenthood in Maryland is a well-mannered, sober Bostonian in a dark suit; it is hard to imagine him raising funds by poking his head in an office door, like Gloria’s volunteers, and asking how many want a pastrami sub.

 
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Posted in Culture, Politics, Reason

 

Bugs or babies?

12 Apr

Bugs or the babies: which deserve more rights?

According to the United Nations, led by Bolivia, bugs and beetles out value our babies.

Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving “Mother Earth” the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

Bolivia recently passed the legislation on the basis of religious worship of the earth deity, “Pachamama.”

Ought wasps have the same rights as women?

This legislation is immoral. When there’s a total moral equivalence between a baby girl and an earwig, how can there be real respect for life? At minimum the conclusion is that it’s a toss up as to which life is worth compassion. Choosing between the life of a mother and her birthing baby is a moral dilemma. This legislation makes killing the mother the moral equivalent of stepping on a spider. In fact, killing a spider and it’s eggs would be a greater moral crime than killing a human mother and her unborn child.

The Judeo-Christian world view argues in the contrary that humans are unique and have both unity and distinction with nature. According to the biblical narrative, humans are created from the dust of the earth and as he breathes his breath, or spirit, into them, they are created in the image of God. Human life is sacred. Our responsibility to both dominate and care for the earth is also a sacred responsibility.

Yet there is a repulsive reaction to Judeo-Christian values in world government, this animistic theology is welcomed. This should bring clarity – religious values are shunned if the United Nations is opposed to the ideas, and embraced if the ideas help the UN achieve its goals. The problem for those seeking greater centralized government power is not religion – it’s certain values that they will reject whether religious or not.

Two Bolivian women. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America

The values pushed by giving the earth spirits rights is simply another way to push for stripping people of their rights. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. The land is rich in natural resources, so business has been clamoring to come into the country. This legislation will stop work, stop jobs, and increase poverty. This is what the legislation is doing in Bolivia; this is what the UN is pushing for.

The UN isn’t interested in the planet, and they aren’t interested in Pachamama worship. This is, in the end, simply a power grab by governments. The legislation “establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature’s complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state.”

That’s right – the whole idea is that what the state says now becomes a matter of rights. To go against the government is a rights-violation issue. This turns the idea of rights on it’s head, taking rights away from people and giving them to the state in the name of ‘mother earth.’

Even in Bolivia it’s clear that this is primarily about governments accruing more power over the people, as the Bolivian president has been declaring for years that the first step to save the planet is “to end capitalism.”

The environmentalist movement is being used in an effort to strip you of your basic human rights and freedom. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon that provides the opportunity to escape from freedom, there’s a better approach.

Rather than basing our ideas on fear (that the earth is about to die) or hatred (of those evil capitalists), we should be basing our ideas on facts. Christians ought to be taking care of the planet in ways that are effective because it is a sacred responsibility; because it is God’s creation; because it is our origin. Much of the specific ways to be “environmental” are agenda-based to gain votes or reward certain companies and industries for political support. A healthier and more effective approach requires better self-education and less readily adopting political and cultural trends.

 
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Posted in Culture, Politics, Reason

 

Love Wins: Part 1, First Impressions

21 Mar

Rob Bell, pastor, author, and speaker in the popular Nooma video series, has just published a book called “Love Wins.” The book is a challenge to Christians to re-think our views of hell, heaven, and salvation.

I haven’t read the book, and I’ve only watched some of this video interview so far – what Bell is communicating, and how he’s communicating it was driving me crazy and I had to take a break. I’m not (as of yet) as troubled by the view of hell – there have historically been various takes on the concept. I’m troubled by what is communicated by at least the first parts of the interview. From my first impressions, which may be far from accurate:

  1. The foundation for theology is no longer “solo scriptura” but “God is Love” (whatever that means). Salvation, while through Christ is no longer connected with faith, so “solo fidei” is gone as well. The discussion has decisively moved outside of reformation/protestant theology.
  2. Bell says that the conversation he’s joining is about ‘what really matters’ (such as, heaven, hell, and flavored coffee syrups, I suppose, depending on your perspective) has been going on for thousands of years. Rob also says that the image of heaven as a place with streets of gold and everyone driving a Ferrari is an inaccurate cartoon image – of course streets of gold comes from scripture, and he adds sports cars to make the biblical perspective seem absurd and then denies it. Given that the foundation for thought is whatever he thinks “God is love” means, it isn’t a surprise that he’s saying his book is simply another addition to the conversation, as were the gospels and John’s Revelation.

    I’m curious about Bells views on canon – what makes a writing part of the Bible? Is the canon open, still being added to today? Is Bell’s book as authoritative as the Bible? is the Bible authoritative, or just some other voices about stuff that “matters”?

    That would help with everything – if scripture isn’t inherently any more authoritative than any other voice, then we can disregard scriptural teachings as just suggestions that we can pick and choose from as we build our part of the discussion.

  3. The idea communicated to me so far that we all experience “hell” every day on earth is packed so full of presuppositions – it presumes that “hell” is simply synonymous for “thinks I don’t like” or “things I think are awful.”

    Regardless of how we’ve now redefined “hell,” the statement means that God has sentenced his people to live in hell as much – or more than those rebelling against Him. This is all in order to make God more like what we consider “love” to mean in “God is love.”

  4. I’m a bit confused, because it doesn’t seem like a loving God would sentence 12 million people, including many Jesus-followers, a worse hell than Hitler. There is no real justice in this life. If God is love, if God is just, if God is holy, suddenly having real, direct consequences for evil makes sense – and there’s no real, direct consequences for evil in this life, or Job’s friends would have been right, and Job’s suffering was because of his sin – but one point of the book of Job is that they were wrong.
  5. I also disagree with Rob’s statement that Jesus was more concerned with heaven on earth than heaven later. “Your kingdom come” is in the Lord’s Prayer, certainly. We are to be a force for good in this world, and God’s kingdom is here, among us. But looking at the parables and the sermon on the mount, it’s largely based on storing up treasures NOT on earth, but somewhere else which is contrasted with this life. The parables are often about punishment/reward at the end, after all action is complete. Jesus also talked about how things are different in heaven than they are now – such as not marrying. The already-not-yet tension of the Kingdom being here in some ways but not in others is a strong theme throughout the New Testament.

    If this hell (per Bell’s view) is the best heaven we ever get, then to follow Jesus’ teaching is to forbid marrying. It also means there is no hope for resurrection or future life. No wedding feast. No “then we shall see face to face.” This all, of course, would be to contradict other very clear teachings in the Bible.

    But then again, if the scripture is simply some old fashioned blokes with childish cartoony ideas that we’ve outgrown, then disobeying what Jesus and his apostles taught isn’t a big deal, and we are free to do and believe as we see right in our own eyes. (This is what the people of Noah’ time were exterminated for by God in the flood, but again it’s not relevant if the Bible is no more relevant than anything else.)

I’m not condemning Bell or anyone else. As I stated, this is just my first impression and may well be wrong. I know people who have condemned Bell unjustly for some time. I think people ought to have a chance to correct themselves and clarify miscommunication. I think we ought to be gracious with each other, and point out error in order that correction may take place rather than just going around condemning people we dislike, misunderstand, or disagree with.

It may be that I have a problem with how he communicates, and he’s not actually overwriting the Bible with his idea of what “God is love” means (and I wonder what it might mean when separated from the biblical context) – it may be that he’s not exalting himself (and you and me) to be on par with scripture (which is self-described as God-breathed).

I’m generally concerned with what the foundational principles and logic are, and what the logical end is when those ideas are carried out. I’d like to see what Bells ideas are, and what they open his followers up to.  I appreciate Bell’s ability to make people re-think, re-consider, challenge presuppositions. When this is done however, the question must be asked: what direction are we heading in now, and under the same re-consideration, is it better or worse than what was previously believed?

At this point I’m hesitant to give Rob Bell money by buying this book, but it’s likely not available cheap and used yet – any suggestions?

 
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Posted in Books, Reason, Spirituality

 

Starbucks’ Funny Math

22 Jan

image

Starbucks doesn’t have the best tea, but I needed a place to finish reading a Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard prior to a discussion of it with some friends this evening, so here I am with the pictured cup of tea.

I normally buy a 1 tea bag venti (20 ounce cup for those who don’t speak Starbuckian). Starbucks had long been a chain that charged by the tea bag rather than the size of the cup our the amount of hot water they give you.  This has changed, and a Grande will now cost you more than a Tall though both only have one tea bag.

Meanwhile, if you purchase with a registered Starbucks card,  they’ll give you free refills with new tea bags. So a Tall refilled several times will use several tea bags and more water, but will cost less than one Grande with one tea bag.

Brilliant.

Update: Apparently it depends on which batista you ask – I was just informed that I would be charged if I wanted more than hot water for my refill. Oooh, free water in America!

 
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Posted in personal, Reason

 

About the open letters about Planned Parenthood funding.

21 Oct

I recently posted open letters to Kohl’s and Staples asking if they support Planned Parenthood. Kohl’s replied that they do not, and I’m still waiting to hear back from Staples.

What is my purpose in writing these letters and figuring out if these large companies where I spend money are financial-backers of abortion?

It’s an interesting struggle, figuring this out, and I’d love any thoughts you have to contribute to a discussion of this kind.

What’s the point of me writing to Kohl’s (who confirmed within 1 business day that they do not donate to Planned Parenthood)? If a clothing store supports Planned Parenthood, I may be able to buy the same clothes from another source. I can’t, however, go without pants altogether. That would be showing the world something, but it wouldn’t be showing them Jesus.

Am I responsible for what Kohl’s, Staples, or other companies do with their money? To answer this, I think about Jesus’ command that the people of Israel pay their taxes, and this money was used to oppress them as well as wage war against others. Jesus didn’t put the responsibility for Rome’s crimes on the people paying taxes. There is no indication that Jesus thought that by paying their taxes they were guilty of Rome’s crimes.The responsibility of the people was to be law-abiding citizens, and to live at peace with all people as far as it was up to them.

So what is our personal responsibility today? The direct application is that we should pay our taxes as required bylaw. A more general principle about money is that we are supposed to be good stewards. Unlike taxes, buying products is not required by law, it it discretionary. (Except for healthcare under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid plan.) That is, while we need clothes, we aren’t obligated by law to buy our clothes from a specific store. Every dollar spent is a vote in favor of who you’re giving the money to.

For a long time I avoided WalMart because of horrible customer service. I avoid Casa Bonita because the food is awful. I avoided The Sharper Image because it was expensive. I walk out of movies and get my money back if it’s overly obscene (Anchorman, Super Bad), a mockery of the very book it’s supposed to based on (The Runaway Jury) or a comedy that’s not funny at all (Napoleon Dynamite). These are all understandable, and I’m adding another category to this list: stores I’ll avoid because of what they do with their profits.

My goal isn’t to start a boycott to shut a place down or put people out of work. My goal is to take the personal responsibility that is given me in being a good steward of the money which God has put me in stewardship.

Do I bear personal responsibility for what someone else does once I give them my money? No. But I do bear responsibility for giving it to them in the first place. Why give my money to a place that supports crimes against humanity when there’s another option?

I’m willing to go to one store over another to save $5. But am I willing to spend the $5 extra if that less of the money that leaves my stewardship is then used for evil? Is $5 worth more than a human life? (Certainly of the $5, perhaps a few cents will be used as a donation to Planned Parenthood and pays for a tiny fraction of an abortion. But by going down this road, we’re making an argument that supporting a certain percent of evil is fine, or else you’ll end up calculating a price tag on a human life. I don’t think that following that logic will lead us to a good place. I think it’s safer to base the argument on good stewardship.)

Would you buy coffee from Al Qaida if it were cheaper than Starbucks? Hopefully you answer “No, because I’d be sponsoring evil just to save a few dollars on a latte.”  I’m proposing that this is the same reasoning we should be using whenever we spend the money under our stewardship.

An investor takes someone else’s money and invests in companies. Good investors will research what they’re investing in to make sure it’s worthwhile. They do their research before investing. And while the investor isn’t responsible for a CEOs decisions, they are constantly watching these companies and the people who lead them to make sure it’s still a good way to invest this money that others have put under their stewardship.

Why would we consider stewardship of God’s stuff less important than an investor’s stewardship other people’s investment funds?

I’m not arguing for making your own clothes from cotton grown in your backyard to avoid the chance of some of someone else being a bad steward. I’m not arguing that you bear personal responsibility for what Microsoft or Starbucks, Mardel’s or Chik-fil-a does with their profits. Perhaps in the future I will make those arguments as I explore these issues, but today I am simply arguing the following:

It is worth the time to learn about where you’re investing God’s money, and choose the options that contribute least to evil according to the information you are able to obtain.

 
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Posted in Politics, Reason, Spirituality

 

Bambi’s mother: Materialism’s moral self-defeat

20 Oct

Bambi's Mother

I was recently speaking to someone about materialism, and I was curious as to how someone who believed only in the natural realm would argue morality.

Evil is that which a good person would stop if they could.

This naturally begs the question: If evil is solely determined as being the opposite of what a good person wants, then what is a good person? An example was given to disprove the existence of a good God.

If Bambi’s mother dies a slow and painful death, that’s something a good person would stop if they could. Therefore, that’s evil and if someone had the power to stop this and they were good, they would stop it. An all powerful God could stop it, but doesn’t, therefore, there is no morally good all-powerful God.

There are many fallacies in this example, but perhaps one will suffice. Materialism rejects God because God would stop that which is morally evil. Having removed the concept of God, the naturalist has also removed the concept of good and evil. In removing the God of the Bible, they have removed that which justified their question the God of the Bible.

In the perspective of materialistic evolution, the natural is all that exists. Some atoms banging together became rocks, and other atoms over time, became Bambi’s mother. There’s no moral superiority of Bambi’s mother. She’s just an accident of nature and though prettier than a rock, has no moral superiority over the rock. In the materialistic world, how is a deer morally superior to a deer’s corpse? Certainly the deer feeds Bambi, but the deer’s corpse feeds the entire forest with nutrients. From the perspective of the naturalist, then, the illustration is that a blob of matter changes due to the world around it. There’s no moral evil there.

“But,” one may object, “the question isn’t just about death, but about agony and pain.”

Yet the same naturalist will argue that pain, like pleasure, is merely the cause and effect of matter and energy bouncing around. Again there is no morality there. The real “evil” is that the deer evolved an ability to feel pain.

Or perhaps the real “evil” is that blobs of matter we call humans evolved a sense of compassion for the pain of other blobs of matter.

While the materialist may say a Christian’s worldview has to deal with the problem of evil, the materialist’s worldview has to deal with the problem of not being able to explain either evil or good.

In other words, the materialist says that human suffering is evil and disproves any moral deity, but they will say in the next sentence that humans are inconsequential byproducts of the evolutionary process and are nothing more than small blobs of matter that are part of the gigantic blog of all matter. They will say that human suffering is an insurmountable challenge to God, but then declare the human suffering is of no consequence at all.

Evil is only defined as that which a good person would stop, and a good person is only defined as a person who stops that which is evil. Evil is only a concept in that it relies on there being a firm definition of goodness, until we ask about goodness, and we find that it can only exist if there’s a firm definition of evil. Having removed any non-material moral force, there is neither a definition of good or evil, so the entire moral argument fades into non-existence.

 
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Posted in How to Fail at Arguing, Reason, Spirituality

 

Why Breast Cancer (part 2)

12 Oct

Last night I asked the question:

Why does one disease that causes 2% of deaths every year get more attention than all other causes of death?

Breast cancer ribbons are on license plates, political buildings, food products, and apparently even football player uniforms. But it causes 2% of deaths. The leading cause of death kills 20 times as many people. That leading cause of death – that which kills more humans in America is abortion.

All things being equal, we should put our most effort into fighting the leading cause of death (abortion) – 20 times the effort we put into breast cancer awareness. For every breast cancer ribbon, there ought to be 15  heart disease ribbons. For every “I love boobies” bumper stickers, there should be two “I love people who don’t remember me” bumper stickers to promote Alzheimer’s disease which kills nearly twice as many people every year.

But we don’t – we don’t walk twenty miles against abortion for every one mile we walk against breast cancer.

So something is not equal. What are the factors?

Last night I speculated that one factor was the sexualization of culture. It’s about breasts, so we care. I also wrote that we wrongly tend to get our self-image and confidence as a man or woman based on our physical appearances, and for a disease to attack one very clear symbol of being a woman is for the disease to attack our frail self-view.

But I missed what may be the biggest factor.

This morning a friend read my blog post on Facebook and wrote

…Cancer also moves people because it is scary – there may be some ways to reduce your risk, but it is not nearly as preventable as say heart disease which is the #1 killer. We know that diet, exercise, maintenance of an appropriate BMI, etc..will drastically reduce risk of heart disease and stroke but there is no such “simple” formula for breast cancer prevention. It affects women of all ages, races, socioeconomic status and is very likely to significantly affect one of your loved ones (and mine)…

By the numbers, we all have more loved ones affected by heart disease and other killers than breast cancer, but about what makes it different from other diseases, I think she was right. Cancer is different than many diseases because they can be prevented. It’s a sneaky indiscriminate killer. It’s not a gang member that shoots you because you’re in the wrong part of town late at night. Like the flu and Alzheimer’s disease, it’s the killer that breaks into your home at night when you’re sleeping. These non-preventable diseases are scarier (though the argument could be made that it’s the preventable ones that need more awareness so people can prevent them).

Breast cancer can affect any adult woman, regardless of many factors, including health. It’s not a “fatty disease,” which could have been prevented or limited if someone kept themselves more attractive. It’s not a disease that only affects old people.

So why do we care more about deaths caused by breast cancer than anything else, including other non-preventable diseases like Alzheimer’s and the flu? From this perspective, because we value the lives of the people affected more than we value the lives of those killed by other causes. We value the lives of pretty young women more than the lives of fat old men.

The message we communicate by the emphasis on breast cancer is thus:

  • Your life is more valuable if you are a woman, and less valuable if you are a man.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are young, and less valuable if you are old.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are skinny, and less valuable if you are overweight.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are a mother, and less valuable if you are a father.
  • Your life is more valuable if you are an adult, and less valuable if you are aren’t born yet.

Perhaps this is incorrect – leave a comment and let me know so we can figure out this riddle: why does the 2% killer get more attention than everything else.

Again – I’m not downplaying breast cancer, or breast cancer awareness. I’m just trying to figure out the disproportionate attention which seems to communicate that the 2% of people who die of breast cancer are more significant than the other 98% of humans who die every year.

 
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Posted in Culture, Reason

 

Our obsession with breasts: breast cancer month

11 Oct

Breast cancer is not the number one killer in America. It is not the number one killer of women.

All cancers, as a category, are the #3 killer, below heart disease, which is #2. But breast cancer kills less people than stroke (cardiovascular disease), chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents (unintentional injuries), Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, nephritis-nephrotic syndrome-and-nephrosis, and even the flu, according to the CDC.

Despite all of these other causes of death killing more of our loved ones than breast cancer, it’s the disease that gets the most attention. The capital building here in Denver has a big pink ribbon on it, as do cars on the street, and food packaging in every grocery store.

I’m not questioning people’s desire to have a cure for diseases. I’m questioning why one disease trumps so many others which together are 50 times as fatal.

It seems that this is our proud-as-a-peacock display of the objectification of women. We care more about breast cancer, even though it’s only the cause of 2% of deaths in America, because it’s about breasts. Promotional material has gotten more honest, at least, like the “boobies” bumper sticker I took a photo of recently. [Post continues below.]

"Boobies" bumper sticker

It’s understandable that we use our bodies as part of our self worth, and that’s another reason it’s significant. We value our bodies to the level of idolatry, and judge our self-worth as men and women by things that set us apart from each other, particularly in sexual ways. This self-view is something Christians are supposed to fight against as it is contrary to what the Bible teaches. Jesus taught that one’s life is more important than any individual body part (Matthew 5:29-30,6:25), and Paul taught that the marks of true femininity was not in appearance, but in character and good deeds (1 Timothy 2:8-10). (The same is true of men, who are supposed to stand out spiritually and in prayer, lifting holy hands in praying for their authorities without anger or disputing.)

Obviously men like breasts for primal, cultural, and primarily sexual reasons as well. Perhaps that really is what it all comes down to for many people – we support breast cancer research more than anything else because heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease doesn’t make us think of sex.

I hope we have a cure for breast cancer soon. I also hope we have a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, diabetes, and other killers. I am troubled that a disease that ranks so low on the list has taken over because the over-sexualization  of our culture.

Please leave comments if there’s reasons I’m unaware of that this 2% killer trumps all others. I’d be interested to learn the answer to this riddle.

Oh – and what is the number one killer in America? Abortion is the number one killer in America. For every 1 woman that dies from breast cancer, 20 babies are aborted – and this only includes legal abortions that are are reported. Twenty.

 
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Posted in Culture, Reason

 
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