Geoff's Miscellany

An atheist writer over at Melting Asphalt wrote this:

In light of this view of religion (as a tribal strategy), I’d like to share a little hack I sometimes use to make sense of religious practices. Whenever I hear someone say “God,” I try substituting “society” in its place. E.g.:

• God is great becomes society is great.
• When someone says, praying before a meal, “We give thanks to God for this food,” I hear praise of society, of civilization
• When a Muslim says that Islam is all about submission to Allah, I understand this as submission to society.

If anyone thinks that he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but instead deceives himself, his religion is worthless.  (27)  A religion that is pure and stainless according to God the Father is this: to take care of orphans and widows who are suffering, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1:26-27)

Every generous act of giving and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father who made the heavenly lights, in whom there is no inconsistency or shifting shadow. (James 1:17)

For people who have trouble with the concept that God is goodness, I recommend reading the posts here at Ed Feser’s blog. God’s existence is a matter of metaphysical demonstration, not a matter of symbolically replacing society with a super-person. Religious people claim either to be trying to live good lives because it is morally appropriate in light of God’s existence or they are a part of a community which claims to have revelation from God (or a combination of the two). That can lead to beliefs that seem crazy but that remains to be demonstrated based on the logic of the claims that the best representatives of the group make, not based on “obviousness.” It’s obvious that humans are internally symmetrical based on their exterior until you dissect one.

Samuel Johnson, in his 1755 dictionary of the English language said thus about Oats:

'a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.'

All the athletes I know who eat oatmeal would perhaps concur that oatmeal helps them to run, lift, and jump like horses. I've elsewhere heard it jokingly described as Oatanobol (reference to a steroid that increases protein synthesis and aggression and thus muscle size and strength).

Anyhow, I suddenly remembered that fact about that dictionary. A co-worker of mine loves Scotsmen (he is one and so was Adam Smith) but he hates oatmeal and he often recounts that quote.

In John's gospel there are themes that relate to root words and concepts that reappear throughout the narrative and in various discourses of Jesus and rejoinders by his opponents. 

στραφεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ θεασάμενος αὐτοὺς ἀκολουθοῦντας λέγει αὐτοῖς· τί ζητεῖτε; οἱ δὲ εἶπαν αὐτῷ· ῥαββί, ὃ λέγεται μεθερμηνευόμενον διδάσκαλε, ποῦ μένεις; (Joh 1:38 BGT)

Then, when Jesus turned and observed them following him, he said to them, "What do you seek?" Then they said to him, "Rabbi, (which translates teacher), "Where are you staying?" (John 1:38)

Now, the obvious meaning of this passage in context is that the two men who decided to geographically follow Jesus (perhaps not even as his disciples yet) just wanted a private place to talk to the guy. But John, in his characteristically ironic manner, makes the passage mean a great deal more. 

λέγει αὐτοῖς· ἔρχεσθε καὶ ὄψεσθε. ἦλθαν οὖν καὶ εἶδαν ποῦ μένει καὶ παρ᾽ αὐτῷ ἔμειναν τὴν ἡμέραν ἐκείνην· ὥρα ἦν ὡς δεκάτη. (Joh 1:39 BGT)

He said to them, "You should come and see." Then they cam and saw where he stayed and they stayed with him that day. It was the tenth hour. (John 1:39) 

Christians and Goal Setting

Can Christians Set Goals?

Jas 4:13-17 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"— (14) yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (15) Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." (16) As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (17) So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Jim West came down, seemingly jokingly, against New Year Resolutions with a quote from James 4:13-16.

13 ¶ Ἄγε νῦν οἱ λέγοντες· σήμερον ἢ αὔριον πορευσόμεθα εἰς τήνδε τὴν πόλιν καὶ ποιήσομεν ἐκεῖ ἐνιαυτὸν καὶ ἐμπορευσόμεθα καὶ κερδήσομεν·
14 οἵτινες οὐκ ἐπίστασθε τὸ τῆς αὔριον ποία ἡ ζωὴ ὑμῶν· ἀτμὶς γάρ ἐστε ἡ πρὸς ὀλίγον φαινομένη, ἔπειτα καὶ ἀφανιζομένη.
15 ἀντὶ τοῦ λέγειν ὑμᾶς· ἐὰν ὁ κύριος θελήσῃ καὶ ζήσομεν καὶ ποιήσομεν τοῦτο ἢ ἐκεῖνο.
16 νῦν δὲ καυχᾶσθε ἐν ταῖς ἀλαζονείαις ὑμῶν· πᾶσα καύχησις τοιαύτη πονηρά ἐστιν. (James 4:13-16 BGT)

My translation:
Come now, you who constantly say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into this city and we will stay there a year and we will do business and we will make profit; you cannot know that which happens tomorrow. What is your life? You are a vapor, appearing for a brief time, then dissipating. Instead, you should say, "Should the Lord will it, we both will live and do this or that. But as it stands, you are boasting in your arrogance, all such boasting is from the Evil One." (James 4:13-16)

Rachel Held Evans noted that Dave Ramsey gets some things wrong about poverty. On my lights she's partially right about where he's wrong. She accused him twice in the article of the false cause fallacy. 

One need not be a student of logic to observe that Corley and Ramsey have confused correlation with causation here by suggesting that these habits make people rich or poor...

 

“This list simply says your choices cause results,” he said, again committing the false cause fallacy. “You reap what you sow.”

Till We Have Faces

A Review

C.S. Lewis' novel Till We Have Faces (TWHF) is retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. The original myth is of a woman whose beauty is so renown that Aphrodite grants her to marry her son Cupid or forces her to marry her son, Cupid. Psyche's sisters are so jealous of her husband that they plot to ruin the marriage (as Cupid is either so beautiful or hideous that he hides himself). The sisters tempt Psyche to use a lantern to catch a glimpse of Cupid, everything goes wrong from there. Lewis' version utterly inverts this. I cannot say too much without revealing key plot points, but in the original tale the gods are petty and in the wrong. In this tale, the main character sees her own face as she tries to reveal what the gods' faces are truly like.

I recently bought Mike Bird's Evangelical Theology. It has been a marvelous read so far, but when I read the section entitled “Traditional Proofs for the Existence of God (pp 180-183)” I was left a bit frustrated. Now, please take the following comments with the understanding that the book, over all, has been edifying. I especially appreciate Bird's attempt to make the gospel message itself (as described in the New Testament) the focal point of each traditional loci of theology. So it looks like this, "How does the gospel inform the doctrine of the church and how do traditional understandings of this doctrine illuminate the gospel." It's a very helpful approach. 

Something I’ve been saying for years has apparently also been said by Neil deGrasse Tyson:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbvDYyoAv9k&w=420&h=315]

This is important to me. When people have repeated the old canard that religious people are necessarily opposed to science and progress I usually point to the fact that I’m not opposed to science and I’m religious. That piece of hard, personally observable date usually never sufficed. I’d quote statistics. That also never seems to work. So I began trying pointing out how religious people, even profoundly religious people like Leonard Euler, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Galileo, and others were scientists and mathematicians and logicians. Heck my landlord is a Christian and a Coral Reef biologist who is doing ground breaking work in preserving, observing, and cataloging rare specimens of coral in Hawaii. I also would try to explain how it was actually the rise of monotheistic religion on an empire wide scale that lead to advancements in scientific knowledge, method, and metaphysical assumptions about reality (like the nature of cause and effect). But it never worked. Hopefully this video will and does help. But since empirical, historical, and testimonial evidence from surveys of scientists didn’t work for me, maybe it won’t for Tyson.

A fiction author/videogame programmer who goes by Vox Day recently posted a blog wherein he notes the problems with trying to explain oneself in our current culture. First he quoted this guy, saying

Like the mistaking of kindness for weakness that plagues today’s nice guys, there is some element of the human mind that frames lengthy and incessant counter-argument as a position of weakness and insecurity. He who masters pithy, concise (and indirect and ambiguous, I might add) communication commands a stronger image of rhetorical confidence and state control than the bloviating firebrand whose logical appeals may indeed be without equal.