Geoff's Miscellany

In a previous post, I explained how to become a Christian.

In this post, I wish to explain (briefly, not in full) why to become a Christian.

1. The gospel is true and it is important to believe true things I'm not going to delve into a length apologetic here, but in my mind the arguments for God's existence are convincing if their premises are accepted in the same manner that Geometry proofs are convincing. Secondly, Jesus is too compelling a character to be invented and the resurrection story is the best explanation of the rise of Christianity.
2. Happiness Martin Seligman has identified five aspects of happiness in the lives of people who claim to be happy (see below). Being a part of any religion can provide these, but Christianity has a special emphasis on rejoicing in the mundane aspects of life as well as in the transcendence of God. It also includes a command to take dominion over the earth (engagement), to spend time building up other Christians in their understanding of the gospel and of their callings (relationships), an allegedly true story of the whole world (meaning), and several duties and moral priorities (accomplishment).
   1. Positive Emotions
   2. Engagement with the world
   3. Relationships
   4. Meaning
   5. Achievement
3. To Receive Forgiveness of Sins Having a guilty conscience is bad and having a guilty verdict is worse. This is especially so if the verdict is concerning rebellion against infinite truth, goodness, and beauty. But thankfully, if Christianity is true, then Jesus offers God's forgiveness to the world, through the church.
4. Eternal Life Most of us do not want to die. This is a good instinct. Jesus offers you an opportunity to experience God and his creation in a fashion that is both ecstatic in quality and eternal in duration. This can freak you out, but perhaps not as much as the notion of dying.
5. Culture Let's face it. While evangelical antics can be fairly stupid and Christians have done bad things in the past, people love Christian culture. Calculus, the scientific method, the Aristotelian synthesis, and the Roman Juriprudential system were all preserved/created/improved upon by Christians. The Christian systems of meditation on creation, Scripture, and the human tradition are frankly super effective and very awesome.
6. Evil is Real Evil is real and must be stood against. But many people find themselves disagreeing with an evil and being told, "That's just your preference." Christianity, though Christians get the details wrong, provides a grounding for opposition to human evil in our own hearts and in others with both
   1. a tradition of natural/non-religious ethical reasoning
   2. a further Biblical tradition of ethical norms

When I was 18, I did some personal training. During my certification test, the cert group had to move us to a different building across the city.

One of the guys needed a ride because a friend had dropped him off. He was jacked. I mean, a really really big dude. He was my height but weighed about 190 pounds. I remember feeling pretty good about myself when he asked if I used steroids based on my squat numbers (which were relatively high, but not absolutely high).

One of the weirdest struggles I have is periodic long stretches of depressive/depressing thoughts.

I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, but I sometimes struggle with debilitating self-doubt, lack of confidence, and even feelings of meaninglessness. And when I said debilitating, I meant that on a vacation I’ve been able to literally sit and do nothing unless somebody asked me to for days in a row. I’m sure that I don’t have clinical depression, because I manage to snap myself out of it. The point of this post is that tremendous self-doubts can be overcome, but not always by debating yourself.

Over at the Bold and Determined blog there is a post about the Three Cs of a morning routine (their post is great, read it).

They are:

1. Coffee
2. Cardio
3. Cold Shower

Not only would I change the order, I would add a fourth.

Previously, I’ve written about two thought katas:

1. The Beginner Kata
2. The Advanced Thought Kata

All habits have a purpose with a point of view based on assumptions which have consequences and form our identities.  With facts, data, and our experiences, we use inferences and judgments in order to determine if our habits are worthwhile.

Application of the first move

In a previous post, I mentioned the five step thought kata my English teacher taught me.

After talking with him last week, taught me this advanced kata:

All thinking has a purpose with a point of view based on assumptions which have implications and consequences.  With facts, data, and our experiences, we use inferences and judgments in order to solve problems and answer questions."

(Richard Paul and Linda Elder of the critical thinking movement)

In karate I found that three forms of training most prepared my mind for fighting:

1. Kata (MMA people hate this, but whatever) Kata is practicing a preset pattern of attacks, blocks, and combos. They were allegedly used to encode entire fighting systems into an easy to memorize format so that the moves could be traditioned to the young. Katas must be memorized and preformed with absolute conviction and focus. I still do two katas on a regular basis.
2. Makiwara (heavy bag is the same thing, really) Makiwara is hitting a post in order to strengthen your muscles and toughen your hands. The idea is to work up to full contact to work on focus and to practice hitting something with resistance similar to a rib cage or abdominal wall. I prefer hitting a heavy bag, but when I was in high school and for my first two years of college, I hit the makiwara every day before I bought a heavy bag. I'm certain that a great deal of my punching power (my instructor said I punched unusually hard for somebody my size) came from the makiwara.
3. Kumite/Randori  This would be free-flowing combat or sparing. We did this most often with jiu-jitsu drills on Fridays, but every couple of weeks we'd do drills with specific constraints (boxing gloves, no groin blows, w/out gloves no head shots, etc).

1. Identify and define the problem
2. Form tentative hypotheses
3. Gather data
4. Test hypotheses
5. Evaluate and decide

In all seriousness, it has gotten me out of many a jam.

Two of the most powerful rhetorical tools are exclusion and shaming.

These tools are related, but distinct:

• Shame- "People like this are terrible, just terrible. Nobody should be like this." Stated as a fact, this may or may not be true. But stated as rhetoric, the idea is to get those who agree to distance themselves from those who disagree and to get those who disagree to feel bad enough to change their minds.
• Exclusion- "As a civilization we're past ideas like this. For instance we have science, but these people still believe in a creator god." This is designed not merely to get the audience to distance themselves from the bad people, but to make them feel like outsiders to the party of fun and brightness that they are missing.

One of the most unfortunate losses during the reformation was the loss of focus on the four cardinal virtues as simple excellencies that are praiseworthy in anybody, but find their truest expression in the Christian Scriptures.

I've written about the cardinal virtues (justice, courage, temperance, and wisdom) briefly in the past and their place in the Bible in the past. They are called cardinal because other virtues tend to hinge on them. For instance power depends upon courage because one must act to gain power, generosity depends up temperance and justice because one must first give to those who deserve and moderate his own desires in order to have extra to give to the needy. I don't intend to say that the cardinal virtues are actually the only hinge virtues, but I see no reason to deviate from a helpful rubric for thinking about human virtue until it is proven useless or wrong. Showing it to be incomplete would be no more damning to the system than showing modern physics to need improvements would be a proof that we should abandon it.

The third art of a true liberal arts education is rhetoric. I've written about grammar and logic already. I’ve also written about rhetoric in the ancient world. Obviously, this post is about rhetoric.

Whereas the purpose of grammar is clarity of communication and the emphasis of logic is the discovery of truth and probability through clarity of thought, rhetoric is the art of discovering and using what is persuasive. More succinctly, rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion.