Geoff's Miscellany

1. When a leader offers you delicacies, be careful what you eat. You can end up owing a rich man things you could never afford to repay.
2. When somebody claims to "love science" they almost always do not know what it is, how its done, or anything about its history. In fact if somebody uses the phrase, "My science sense is tingling," or talks about how they deny some religion, some ethical axiom, or refuse to utilize basic logic in their arguments because "science," the more likely they know nothing about science at all.
3. Insulting somebody after you dismantle their argument isn't ad-hominem it is just good old fashion insulting. Ad-hominem is insulting the person to discredit his ideas. Insulting somebody after demonstrating their ideas to be false is just icing on the rhetorical dessert.
4. The friends I have most in common with are a Coastie, an Army Ranger, some missionaries, a New Testament scholar, a harrier pilot, an Army Ranger, some engineering majors, nurse, a lawyer, and a couple of pastors. Our commonality is either our sarcasm or the gospel. I hope it is the latter.
5. My wife wrote a post for young women about refusing to date cads and misanthropes. In my spare time I've been studying social-psychology studies about human pair bonding. The science is telling. Women potentially tend to prefer cads and idiots if they do not try to use things like reason or obedience to Christian principles in their sexual/romantic decisions. I may make a post in the future summarizing the findings, but here are some. Please see the studies cited in the articles. The third link is to the study itself. As it turns out, some times women are attracted to men who exhibit appetitive aggression (read as violent tendencies). Note: I typically think that evolutionary psychology is simply silly, but these are studies of traits. You can accept the data without accepting what the authors think it means about ancient human history. Just-so stories are for fairy tales, not academic journals.

Most of my friends know that I really like comic books or at least that I used to. I don’t buy them often or collect them. So I’m not a “nerd” in the technical sense. I’m more a fan. Nevertheless I like them. I also like the band “Coheed and Cambria.” So when, about two years ago, they released a song titled, “Deranged” about the Batman’s conflict with the Joker from the Joker’s point of view I was excited. They did not disappoint. The song is excellent. Claudio Sanchez (the lead singer of Coheed) has a great capacity for singing in the voice of the characters beside himself because of the fact that his whole musical project is a fictional story of quite epic proportions (a novel, a series of comics, back story albums, and seven disks of albums in the main story).

Ever since the days of Bacon and Newton philosophers and scientists have bothered themselves with determining the material and efficient causes of various objects and events. They, as a matter of course neglected, ignored, and repudiated the use of the concepts of formal and final causality. That was a brief summary of a truncation of thinking about nature that occurred during the Enlightenment era. This truncation, because of its laser like focus on determining what things are made of (material causes) and what events precede others and lead to them (efficient causes). Edward Feser, in his excellent intro to Aquinas' thought notes a lame duck critique of final causes (the idea that something either has a function, tendency, or goal in its nature):

Below is an exercise, not in critiquing the author’s post, per se, but rather critiquing a set of assumptions he makes that lead, inexorably, to the material in his post. His assumptions about what constitutes gospel, what it means to preach Christ, and what “the law” is in the New Testament are disputable on the grounds of reading a few more paragraphs of the very book of the New Testament he quotes the most (Romans). 

Lately I’ve come across several citations of an ancient work, “The Four Centuries on Love.” It means four series of one hundred meditations upon love. The work is by a St. Maximus the Confessor. He is a favorite theologian among the Greek Orthodox. He lived from 580-662 ad. who wrote on various topics: Christology, a devotional guide to the life of Mary, love, Biblical interpretation, and answers to difficult questions.

In his new book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, David Bentley Hart notes that during the medieval era almost nobody thought that "the relation of soul and body was anything like a relation between two wholly independent kinds of substance: the ghost and its machine (which for what it is worth, was not really Descartes understanding of the relation either). (p. 168)" This is interesting to me because one of the chief critiques I had heard of Descartes is that he posited that humans are primarily "thinking things" and the mind interacts with the body almost incidentally. But I had always been intrigued when I read Descartes third meditation he notes this, "For since I am nothing but a thinking thing, or at least, since I am now dealing simply and precisely with the part of me that is a thinking thing, if such a power were in me [the power to create oneself from nothing], then I would surely be aware of it. (Third Meditation paragraph 49)"

Several months ago I wrote a review of the book Superstition. Thinking back to numerous of its claims one in particular came back to mind. Park stated often that when Christians believe in God in prevents them from doing science because they already know that God made it, therefore nobody has to ask any questions. I rarely make claims to know what people believe without asking them, I also rarely make attempts to clarify physics for physicists (though I've discovered that with a bit of reading I can do a lot of physics). But I am trained to study ancient texts and history, something Park couldn't do. 
Christians today may really think that science is dangerous to Christianity. But in the medieval era (an era you'll recall was not really the Dark Ages) science was considered a gold mine of important data about the world. Etienne Gilson note in The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy:

Based on a link posted in the comments at Jim's blog I found a supposed source for Barth-less pride. 

The apparent source of people not wanting to read Karl Barth a post by Janice Reese at this blog. People who used her post to excuse intentional ignorance misunderstood her point. She notes, with all the sincerity I can tell from the internet, that she suffers from hypocrisy. I do too. So we have something in common, so I hope that my counter-point can be taken humbly. 

Doug Wilson wrote a post entitled "Believing One Half of the Wrong End of It."

In it he notes: 

A careful opposition to Calvinism, say on the contentment question above, would say something like Calvinism ought to be Stoicism, given the critic’s understanding of the premises, and it is therefore a matter of great curiosity that it is nothing of the kind. That would allow interaction between the views that are actually held by actual people. It is a pity that this kind of thing is so rare — but it must be admitted that it has always been easier to debate with cartoons, especially with the ones you draw yourself.

A favorite verse of Scripture for many (and rightly so) is Acts 2:42. After a whole bunch of people get baptized Luke writes, "They were devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer (Act 2:42 NET)." But what did this look like? Was it disorganized hanging out? Or was there more to it?

Well, one of the earliest Christian writers, Justin Martyr, noted this in his defense of the Christian faith