Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Geoff

Islam and the Political Left

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I remember last year when the HuffPo article Muslims are the True Feminists came out and I thought it was a joke. In the past, I had considered creating a feminist character who wrote articles for them claiming that the only way to be a true woman was to have an abortion in order to prove that they would publish anything. But alas, they did publish it. And the author does point out some true things, such as the liberating power of modesty. But what is interesting is that this article was seen as explicitly empowering by left leaning types who sympathize with social justice, despite having selections like this:

So I urge my Free the Nipple gal pals to take a look at your Muslim sisters and collaborate with them to create a feminism that treats the female body as a temple and not as a toy. Let us see feminism in a different light—through modesty and the courage to savor our sugar. Let us call on the Muslim feminists of the world.

In other words, don’t fall for stupid ideas, such as the idea that displaying your body nudely on the Internet is a rebellion against the male gaze. To overcome such stupidity, she argues, feminists should look to the traditions of Islam.

Now, I’m no Muslim and I don’t think that hijab chic is the answer to issues of self-esteem and women’s rights. But the argument isn’t utterly insane. But what is weird is that the argument was accepted and applauded by people who write endless articles connecting modesty with rape culture, body shaming, and eating disorders when Christians care about it. One article even goes so far as to say that Jesus doesn’t care how people dress, despite the Biblical call in several places for men and women to be modest with their dress. Why is modesty enforced by Muslim men (by legal penalties) a sign of feminist liberation, but modesty recommended in Christian circles a deadening force of patriarchal oppression? I mean, even in very secular cities, the main restriction on women’s dress is that they can’t walk about topless…but most women don’t want to anyhow as people naturally tend to cover erogenous zones in circumstances in which they aren’t soliciting a mate.

As bizarre as the example above is, Edward Feser made a few more observations:

All of this is, of course, well known.  My point in rehearsing it here is neither to compare Islam unfavorably to other religions, nor, for the moment, to suggest that any of the facts rehearsed reflects inherent (as opposed to historically contingent) features of Islam, though I will address that question below.  The point is rather this.  Western Christianity has largely accommodated itself to liberalism.  Give or take a few standout episodes (such as the French Revolution), it has less political power now than at any time since before Constantine.  And the more any of its tenets are out of sync with liberalism, the less likely even prominent churchmen are to talk about those tenets in public or to put much emphasis on them in private.  Christianity, in short, has effectively been “tamed” by liberalism.  And yet liberal Christophobia has only increased.  You might think, then, thatIslamophobia would be an even greater tendency within liberalism, given how very much farther out of sync contemporary Islam is with contemporary liberal mores and policy.  And a few prominent left-of-center voices — Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Bill Maher — have indeed been highly critical of Islam.

But in fact most liberals exhibit exactly the opposite tendency.  Probably many liberal readers of this article, including those happy to rehearse the purported sins of Christianity, will have been made uncomfortable by the list of facts about Islam rehearsed above.  To say anything which might seem in any way to put Islam in a bad light is to risk having flung at one the now-routine accusation of “anti-Muslim bigotry.”  The tendency is to downplay every aspect of historical and contemporary Islam which is irreconcilable with liberalism, to search out and call attention to aspects which are (or can be interpreted as) favorable to or at least compatible with liberalism, and to insist that the latter alone are representative of “genuine” Islam.  In his New Criterion article, Minogue noted how Christophobia has been conjoined with an “extraordinary solicitude for Islamic sensibilities in Western states since 9/11” — since 9/11, take note.  Despite 9/11, and indeed, one is tempted to say evenbecause of 9/11.  Every new jihadist attack seems, as if by a kind of reverse inductive reasoning, to make some liberals even moreconfident in their judgment that there is no essential connection between Islam and terrorism, and that Islam and liberal values are ultimately reconcilable.

The concomitant of Christophobia, then, seems to be not Islamophobia but rather a kind of Islamophilia, and the condemnationof Islamophobia as itself a manifestation of the purported evils of traditional Christianity.  Nor is it only in liberal perception of current events that Christophobia and Islamophilia are conjoined.  As Minogue also observed, one of the ritualistic liberal expressions of Islamophilia is an incessant “apologizing for the Crusades” — this despite the fact that the Crusades, while far from morally spotless in their execution, were essentially defensive responses to medieval Islamic aggression, as actual historians of the Crusades like Jonathan Riley-Smith andThomas Madden never tire of demonstrating.   Modern Westerners apologizing for the Crusades is like Eliot Ness’s descendents apologizing to Al Capone’s descendents for some of Ness’s men having gotten a bit rough with some of Capone’s men.

Feser has some reasons as to the apparent compatibility between Western Liberalism and Islam. My thought is that for both sides it’s strategic and naive. Leftists find in Islam a useful rhetorical tool to use against Christians and Christianity. But because they don’t believe that anybody sincerely believes their religion, they think that once Islam is on the rise, it can be modified (it won’t work). Similarly, Muslims who genuinely believe that dar al Islam should encompass the world see liberalism as a tool against Christianity without realizing that the deep hatred that leftists typically have for tradition and hierarchy could eventually be used against them.

Anyway, any layer of this commentary might be wrong, it’s impressionistic at best.

 

Responsibility is where you find greatness

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Introduction: What does it mean to achieve greatness?

One of the most fundamental questions in life is, “What is greatness?” Jesus answers this question in the gospels. He says that greatness lies in responsibility or service to others. Below are two versions a story where he answers the second question. One is from Luke, the other from Mark. They clarify one another, as they both omit from and add to the tale:[1]

Luke

24 And there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest. 25 And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called ‘Benefactors.’ 26 “But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. 27 “For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves.[2]

Mark

35 aJames and John, the two sons of Zebedee, *came up to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You.” 36 And He said to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” 37 They said to Him, “Grant that we may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left, in Your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”

 

39 They said to Him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you shall drink; and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized. 40 “But to sit on My right or on My left, this is not Mine to give; but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

 

41 Hearing this, the ten began to feel indignant with James and John. 42 Calling them to Himself, Jesus *said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their great men exercise authority over them. 43 “But it is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant; 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all. 45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”[3]

 

Greatness is responsibility, not authority nor rights

In what transpired above, Jesus told his disciples that true greatness in his kingdom is defined by by service to the most people one could feasibly manage. In other words, Jesus’ kingdom [the people who follow him] should recognize and approve of those who take on great responsibility, not simply those who have great power. The example of this is that Jesus, the most powerful man, took on the most responsibility.

The disciples had apparently been thinking of greatness in terms of personal power and authority (James and John wanted the power to cast fire from heaven!), personal recognition (service and childhood are not positions of honor), and rights (the other disciples were upset).

This passage has isn’t about servant leadership. It’s not merely instruction for how to be a leader (as if serving were a substitute for vision, management, and command of people’s attention…Jesus still had all those). Instead, it is instruction for greatness. Christians should pursue greatness in terms of what will lead God to see them as great. According to Christ, we pursue this form of greatness by taking on responsibility.

Cain and Abel

Briefly, there is a connection between this story and the Cain and Abel story. God approves of Abel for improving his lot (God tells Cain that ‘if you make good of it, won’t you be uplifted’) and taking on responsibility for the animals God had made.

But Cain’s concern is not that he has responsibility for the sin in his life, but that he resents his brother and wants his rights. And so, the story goes, Cain murdered him. I think a great deal of the Bible is a narrative interplay between those two ways of being in the world and the stories above are no exception.

Finally: A Ransom for many?

We cannot imitate Christ in this. You and I cannot take on the sins of the world as he did. But…he explicitly uses this as an example worthy of imitation:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. (Mark 10:45)

How do we do that? I used to think, “There’s just no way.” That’s foolish. But then I thought of passages of the Bible like this:

24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.[4]

So, I think there is a sense in which Christians are responsible to give their lives as a ransom for many or, as it’s put in various ways in the New Testament, to bear the sins of the world. What would this mean? I have a few suggestions:

  1. Take responsibility for the sins or mistakes of others, in a way that does not enable or harm them. Examples: one might pick up garbage on a walk, clean up after a child at a shop so that the owner does not have to, Job sacrificed for his children, etc.
  2. John said to pray for sinners, try it.
  3. James says that telling the truth to sinners might win them back and cover their sins (James 5:19-20).
  4. One might also bear their own load and resolve only to boast about personal growth so that they might not grow arrogant and thus be able to bear the loads of others (see Galatians 6:1-5).
  5. One might refuse to spread gossip about others and thereby guard their reputation.

Conclusion

The more responsibility we justifiably take upon ourselves, the greater we become. Here are some examples to start building a habit of greatness:

  1. Start a morning/evening routine.
  2. Read aloud to/with your children, no matter how old they are.
  3. Clean your kitchen every day.
  4. Pick up garbage when you go for a walk.
  5. Call a friend and ask, “what can I do to help you right now?”
  6. Make your bed daily (I hate making the bed).
  7. Take ownership of your circumstances (your fault or not).
  8. Leave every where you go better than you found it.
  9. Plant a garden.
  10. Clean the parking lot at church.

These are subtle changes that will add responsibility, meaning, and greatness to your life.

References

[1] My temptation, which I’m learning to overcome, is to explain something in-depth about which gospel came first. I always wants to explain every chain of reasoning that leads to the three main conclusions I’m making below. Instead, I’m going to state them, explain what they mean, and let you decide if they’re justified. I fear not justifying everything I say to every possible audience, which is paralyzing. I do this in conversation and speeches. In fact, I every academic paper I start gets bogged down in hunting down dozens of citations. It’s pitiful, and here I go again!

[2] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Lk 22:24–27.

[3] Mk 10:35–45.

[4] Col 1:24.

Conclusions, no arguments.

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I had titled this post, ‘random thoughts.’ But many of these are things I’ve thought a lot about. They aren’t random, they’re just topics I’d like to write about/discuss with folks but probably won’t write about for fear of wasting my time (only about two of my posts here have comments).

  1. Matthew’s gospel really was written first.
  2. Sex differences are real, down to the molecular level.
  3. With respect to #2, sex differences should be considered a first principle when it comes to raising children.
  4. The Beatles are overrated, the Stones and even Fleetwood Mac are better.
  5. Other than occasionally being motivating on a hormonal level or linguistically intriguing, rap music is pointless.
  6. The typical Protestant/Evangelical articulation of justification by faith alone and ‘once saved always saved’ are incorrect and potentially dangerous to peoples’ souls.
  7. Capitalism, insofar as it means, ‘non-coercive commerce’ is not workable in nations where Christianity is not the publicly preferred religion and practiced with sincerity by a large visible minority.
  8. In connection with this, free trade agreements are a mistake.
  9. The average humanities degree in the modern university is pointless economically and intellectually empty.
  10. The New Testament simultaneously makes room for women as prophets in the church while maintaining the existence of some form of hierarchy in the household.
  11. Attempts at analogies for the trinity are bad most of the time.
  12. Fiction can be truer than history.
  13. The Old Testament has a lot more information about demons are fallen powers than Old Testament scholars tend to acknowledge.
  14. While deontological ethics (right and wrong are right and wrong regardless of consequences) is correct with respect to knowing morality, consequentialist reasoning is best for getting people to behave morally.
  15. The distinction between law and morality is important for interpreting Scripture.
  16. There are multiple true senses to Scripture, particularly the passages of poetry and the archetypal stories prior Abraham.
  17. In line with #16, many Biblical stories appear to be designed to promote inquiry from several angles rather than to promote a specific point of view.
  18. Dante’s Inferno is as much psychology as it is theology and poetry.
  19. The average school, if studied without presupposition, would appear to be designed to promote listlessness, ignorance, and inattention.
  20. Aristotle’s metaphysic is, at least with regard to actuality/potentiality, and therefore causality and the soul.
  21. Evolutionary theory contains several logical leaps, provides many satisfactory explanations of the life on planet earth, has no business in a high school biology class, and poses no threat to Christianity.
  22. Genetic differences between human groups are selected for environments over thousands or millions of years. (my apparently Scottish self has no business in south Texas, stepping outside is asking for a heat rash, sun burn, or worse).

Random thoughts and links 5-29-2017

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  1. Does Capitalism Hurt Women?
    The article answers no. I think the abbreviated explanation is satisfactory.
  2. What might actually be leading to apparent increases in autism?
    I am aware of no scientific evidence for the connection between autism and vaccines, but all that bluster might be a bit of a distraction from several contributing factors that are less politically correct to mention:

    1. Maternal Age
      Women have children later and later in life. It’s not just that they’re continuing to have children, it’s that they’re having their first children much later (in the upper classes, anyway…women continue to have children prior to marriage in lower socio-economic rungs). But because careerism is pushed so hard, the biological realities are rarely explained to women who want a family and a career, but advancing maternal age predicts autism spectrum disorder
    2. Maternal Obesity
      We’re fatter than ever. There are several risks for this state of affairs to anybody residing in the womb of an obese person, but it is rarely hinted that autism is one of them.
    3. Maternal Antidepressant Use
      A few studies suggest a link between autism and maternal antidepressant use. While the link is small, the most recent look into the issue (2016) suggests that more research needs to be done. It does appear to be true that boys are more susceptible to ASD from in association with SSRIs. This particular issue is of some importance in light of the fairly recent revelation that 21% of American women are on psychiatric drugs.
    4. Paternal Age
      Because of several factors, ranging from delayed marriage, delayed reproduction, or the remarriage of older men to younger women (after men age physically, they’re typically more resource rich, so they seem to remain in the dating pool potential for younger women), men are fathering children at older ages than in the past. And the data on autism spectrum and paternal age is “robust.”
    5. Endocrine Disruptor Exposure
      While air pollution is verified to have neuro/psychological effects, another key environmental factor to consider is endocrine disruptor exposure. These chemicals are quite common in plastics. Based on Simon Baron-Cohen’s research on the connection between in-utero androgen exposure and autism, it’s worth a look. And as it turns out, some evidence is beginning to emerge.
  3. Yale University has awarded those who oppose free speech. There are several solutions to problems of this sort. My favorite is solution is that the universities should continue to cater to this small but noisy coterie of agitators while a group of smaller schools follow a market model designed around product quality and efficiency. People underestimate the possibility of this because they assume that sports or other interests will overtake a school if it becomes market oriented, but this is simply untrue. Most schools take donations and government money which determine the sort of product that can be offered. If a school taught specific skills at a high level, even the skills of the humanities, such a school could thrive if is was reasonably priced and owned/managed by the professors. Churches did this in the past.  Of course, that’s all idealistic, somebody has to build it.
  4. Jordan Peterson’s lectures on the Bible have started:
  5. Vicki Larson writes that marriage shouldn’t receive social benefits of privileges. The thesis is interesting. The argument is not only boring, but unconvincing. Insofar as a society exists in which parents prefer to take prime responsibility for their own children, marriage will continue to exist. And insofar as procreation is how society continues to exist, then marriage will be the prime theatre for social responsibility and therefore privilege. Why? Because privilege and responsibility usually go together.

The Best Article I’ve read in the WSJ

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In an unusual occurrence, I found a pretty good WSJ article today in which the author argues that nationalism (what I’ve called friendly-competition nationalism or neighborly concerned nationalism in private conversations) might solve some of the problems with poorly assimilating Islamic cultures around the world:

To wit, for most people everywhere, humanity is “too large and too diverse” to provide meaningful communion. “I cannot prove that the nation-state is the only viable form,” he says. “But what I’m sure about is that to live a fully human life, you need a common life and a community. This is a Greek idea, a Roman idea, a Christian idea.”

And:

Then again, the 19th-century marriage of liberalism and nationalism ended in a very ugly divorce in the first half of the 20th century. What about the dangers of reviving nationalism today? “There is no a priori guarantee that it could not devolve into something nasty,” Mr. Manent says. “But if we don’t propose a reasonable idea of the nation, we will end up with an unreasonable idea of the nation. Because simply: However weakened the idea of the nation, nations do not want to die.”

The article was written in response to what is, regardless of what people think of its source, a piece of political wisdom of an older, saner age:

America is a sovereign nation, and our first priority is always the safety and security of our citizens. We are not here to lecture. We are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship.

The reason I was always, and will always be reticent to identify with a particular political party is the tendency of the current parties to frequently engage in endless wars, endless invitations to those dispossessed by those wars to live here, and endless nation-building in response to the destruction wrought by said wars.

Does Religion Cause All Those Wars?

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Reposted from my old blog.

This post was meant to be a brief response to Sam de Britto’s short article on the relationship of God-belief to war. It mostly became a rambling essay spring boarding from his thoughts.

Atheists are goofuses

Sam de Britto posted a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald about God and war. He’s one of those brilliant brights who intentionally mischaracterizes what most believers in God claim their God-belief constitutes. So he calls God a sky-wizard and gives up his effort to prove a point by saying, “Build your churches, mosques and temples – I’m building a bomb shelter.”
The article has some statements that might be factual, but that is disputable. What interests me is that based upon his own logic (not mine) he’s wrong:
It must be frustrating worshipping an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful being and He does nothing to smite, humiliate or deter those who do not. Violence or discrimination in God’s name thus seems to be the ultimate redundancy because surely the point of divine omnipotence is setting the chessboard just as you’d like it…
Take the same stand against God [that I take] in the US and you’ll never see high public office, which means every “leader of the free world” now believes in the Sky Wizard or is so fearful of a pious backlash, they lie about it in public and toddle off to church every Sunday to complete the charade…
So, according to his presupposition, “nothing happens to humiliate or deter unbelief” he is incorrect. This is the case because he whines that atheists are persecuted and that world leaders have to pretend to believe in God to be elected.
This should have been obvious to him because on his (wrong view) of divine omnipotence, God very well could have set it up so that the leaders of the free world believe in the sky wizard, and indeed has done so. De Britto even sarcastically identifies the alleged persecution he faces , at the hands of religious fanatics in Australia, with God: “God is very much with us and he’s coming to get me…” With respect to his first premise, if these persecutors are real, then things do happen to deter unbelief.
So, if God is setting up a chess board (which I doubt) and God’s work is to be identified with what believers do without qualification (which is a stupid idea, but de Britto accepts it), then God did make the state of affairs difficult for atheists.  The author is wrong on several levels since most religions really do claim, in their own holy books, that there is a right and a wrong way to do their religion. This means that one cannot attribute the works of every religious person to the deity to whom they give allegiance. There’s a heuristic in a holy book, tradition, or aphorism.

The imaginative atheist

Aside from barely rising to the level of writing a self-consistent article, the author ran into other troubles as well. He also accepts the idea that the west, in general, isn’t friendly toward atheists. He appears to have imagined a version of western civilization that is more akin to a Caliphate than any actual Western nation. But when it comes to the data available, some polls show that even atheists distrust atheists,  but it still remains the case that in general Christians and non-Christian religious types are quite friendly toward atheists.
This might be because Christians were identified as atheists by the pagan roman empire. Christians who know that might feel some kinship with atheists. We understand why people worship other things, we just find said worship to be unappealing on the basis of our other commitments. It is also the case that my atheist friends, many of whom I befriended after they made fun of me and I joked back with them, eventually reveal that they make fun of religious people or start debates with them in the midst of non-argumentative conversation. In other words, they pick fights. Everybody argues with that guy, whether a Christian a libertarian, or an atheist. If you act like the weird uncle and then also act shocked by people thinking you’re a jerk, then you are the weird uncle.

The Historically Errant Atheist

The main error is obvious, but he makes more. It’s not even his identification of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the late Hitchens as esteemed thinkers (of then, only Hitchens stands out). He steals their hypothesis that moderate religious people somehow enable extremists (no citation?!?! Sad!):
As has been pointed out by many esteemed thinkers, this is the insidious nature of “moderate” religion. It makes it all so reasonable to respect and treasure “fantastic propositions” that can be believed without evidence and that it’s only extremists who distort the “truth”.
If the religion has a heuristic, you can tell if its followers are doing it right or wrong by checking:
  1. the source text (Bibles, Vedas, etc.)
  2. how the mainstream sects interpret said text
  3. what are people doing that either contradicts or comports with that interpretation.
In other words, any religion that judges its extremists according to it’s orthodoxy is, by definition, not enabling them. As an aside, atheism, as simple belief that God is not, has no orthodoxy, so it’s weird to hear atheists criticize atheists for not being atheistic correctly.

The Potentially Violent Atheist

Another problem problem is the over-all premise that because he identifies certain social ills that have a connection to God belief, that he’s found the solution to all wars: Get rid of God belief, get rid of violence. He’s not as violent about it as Sam Harris, who famously recommends preemptive violence against others based on their beliefs, but he does allude to Harris, so one wonders if he buys Harris’ argument that killing religious people for their beliefs is a good idea. Harris mentions this in his book The End of Faith:
The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live. Certain beliefs place their adherents beyond the reach of every peaceful means of persuasion, while inspiring them to commit acts of extraordinary violence against others. There is, in fact, no talking to some people. If they cannot be captured, and they often cannot, otherwise tolerant people may be justified in killing them in self-defense. This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

The Historically Errant Atheist

Now, Mike Bird deals with his argument on the level of articulating what Christians actually believe or at least what their holy book articulates (some Christians do not know that the New Testament says to love your enemies).
But I’m more interested in the fact that the “religion causes wars trope” has been refuted. Vox Day refuted it by actually checking the Encyclopedia of Wars (don’t buy it, it’s pricey, several libraries have it, check worldcat.org). I have a digital copy and searched through its religion references. He is potentially correct when he notes that the Encyclopedia of War lists as religious “123 wars in all, which sounds as it is would support the case of the New Atheists, until one recalls that these 123 wars represent only 6.98 % of all of the wars recorded in the encyclopedia” (Vox Day, The Irrational Atheist, 105). As an aside, Vox includes more wars than the authors do in the “religiously motivated wars” category. It’s honestly difficult to even find that many.
So, are there atrocities that are apparently happening as a logical consequence of certain forms of God-belief? Yes. Or more clearly put: Are people doing evil things for which they use God-belief as a justification and warrant? Yes. But is it the case that horrible conflicts, strange evils, and injustices would end if we got rid of religious belief? No. People find lots of reasons that are disconnected from God to go to war, to cheat, to steal, to wantonly mistreat others, destroy property, and so-on.

References

Phillips, Charles, and Alan Axelrod. 2005. Encyclopedia of Wars. New York: Facts on File, Inc.
Vox Day. 2008, The Irrational Atheist. Benbella