The Sin Of Simplicity

Proverbs warns about being simple-minded. "How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?" (1:22) The simple should become wise rather than remaining simple (Psalm 19:7).

Despite all of the advantages people in modern cultures have in intellectual contexts - higher literacy rates, more widespread formal education, better technology that includes more access to information, more political freedoms, etc. - it's common for people to not only be too simple in their thinking, but to even treat it as something virtuous and respectable. Supposedly, it's good that they're such simple people who don't learn much about a subject or mature in other ways.

Jesus told us that having more makes you responsible for more (Luke 12:48). Given the intellectual advantages we have in contexts like the United States, we should have much more to show for those advantages than we do.

Be careful not to encourage simplicity where you shouldn't. The immaturity of your children, people in your church, or people in YouTube threads, for example, should be discouraged rather than encouraged. They should be held to a higher rather than lower standard and should be expected to mature over time. That includes maturing intellectually and becoming more active in disseminating information rather than perpetually looking for other people to provide the information.

Support For Reformation Beliefs Among The Pre-Reformation Hussites (Part 3)

Murray Wagner refers to how Petr Chelcicky "denounced the doctrine of purgatory...Chelcicky's rejection of purgatory has its precedent among the Waldenses and Lollards and is paralleled in the Taborite demand that chantries for the dead and intercessory prayers to the saints also be abolished." (Petr Chelcicky [Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1983], 121-23) Wagner refers to how Chelcicky ridiculed "the veneration of saints" (127) and was "critical of prayers of intercession to the saints" (143). Craig Atwood refers to Taborite opposition to images (The Theology Of The Czech Brethren From Hus To Comenius [University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009], 118). Katerina Hornickova writes:

In reality, the view of saints’ merits and intervention in Hussite and Utraquist teaching varied among different fractions of the religious movement, from refusal by the radicals to acceptance by conservatives....

With the influence of Matthew of Janov, and wyclifite ideas on the Hussite theologians Jacobellus of Stříbro and Nicolas of Dresden, the radical Hussite party’s view of the contemporary Catholic cultic practices of veneration of saints’ relics and images was largely negative....

[quoting Nicolas Biskupec of Pelhřimov] "from the authority of the doctors it is clear that invocations and prayers are (forms of) cult that are appropriate only for God…Therefore we do not pray and invoke the saints, nor do we seek help from them and thus impede the cult that only God deserves"...

Nicolas’ ideas were developed in the writings of Petr Chelčický (c. 1390–1460), an original thinker, close to the radicals, in his writings of 1430s-1440s. The founding ideology of what came to be the Unity of Brethren takes on a similar critical view on the cult of saints, refusing the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the saints.

Some of the more radical Hussites were premillennialists for a while (Murray Wagner, Petr Chelcicky [Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1983], 33).

Atwood writes that "The churches that developed out of the Hussite reforms made congregational singing a central part of worship decades before Martin Luther set Protestant doctrine to tavern tunes." (The Theology Of The Czech Brethren From Hus To Comenius [University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009], 52)

Regarding literacy, education, and the reading of scripture: "The Czech Reformation had made lay reading of the vernacular Bible a key component of reform, but in Prague it was primarily the aristocracy and wealthy burghers who had this privilege. The Taborites extended biblical literacy to the common people. This ideal of an educated, active laity would bear rich fruit in the Unity, especially in Comenius's advocacy of universal education." (111)

Roman Catholic Respectability Bought At The Price Of Liberalism

I recently had an email exchange that was partly about the idea that Catholicism is more appealing than Evangelicalism to people who are more educated. It's often suggested that converts to Catholicism are more educated than converts to Evangelicalism, that learning more about church history or some other subject leads people to Catholicism, that Catholicism is more intellectually respectable because it's more correct on philosophical, historical, and other matters, and so on. And Catholicism's alleged intellectual advantages in such contexts are often portrayed as evidence that the claims of traditional Catholicism are true, that conservative Catholicism has been vindicated. Really, though, something else is going on instead. During the course of my recent email discussion, I was reminded that many people are unaware of how liberal much of Roman Catholicism has become.

I'm not just referring to political liberalism, though that's part of it, but primarily liberalism in contexts like theology and the historicity of scripture. See here regarding how Catholicism has changed in various ways on a lot of issues, sometimes in a liberal direction. For some examples of recent Popes taking liberal positions on issues, see here. Raymond Brown was one of the most prominent Catholic Biblical scholars in recent decades. He wrote a book on the infancy narratives that's still widely regarded as the standard in the field. The view he argued for there was largely liberal. Here's a collection of posts I wrote in response to Brown. You can find discussions of other examples of liberalism in Catholicism in other posts in our archives (e.g., here).

Religious, moral, and political conservatives are often attracted to Catholicism because it's such a large and respected institution, with so much social standing, educational institutions that are highly regarded, associations with the arts, and other attributes they find appealing. But much of that has been purchased at the price of liberalism or purchased through some other problematic means. Would Catholicism retain its popularity, its associations with so many institutions, the amount of media coverage it gets, and so on if it were more consistently conservative and did substantially more to discipline its people for departing from those conservative standards? Surely not, as individuals like Raymond Brown and Joe Biden and their supporters illustrate. Catholicism often becomes more appealing by becoming overly involved in a culture and too much like the culture. That isn't all that's going on. There are some traits of Catholicism that distinguish it from the surrounding culture and move it in other directions than what I'm focused on here. But there's a large strand of cultural adaptation in Catholicism.

Steve Hays wrote a post more than a decade ago about the difference between seeing the church as a tabernacle and seeing it as a temple. That distinction has some relevance here.

Homeschooling

Alex Harris is a Harvard law grad (JD). He's also a former law clerk for both Neil Gorsuch and Anthony Kennedy. He defends homeschooling against a Harvard law professor who believes homeschooling should be presumptively banned. And interestingly he's one of apostate Joshua Harris' younger brothers.

Open-Access JSTOR Database Accessible to the Public

http://www.universitytimes.ie/2020/03/jstor-makes-database-accessible-to-the-public/

Free textbooks

https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/textbooks

Homeschooling During #COVID19

https://shenviapologetics.com/homeschooling-during-covid19/

Reeducation camps

In the past, some right-wingers have predicted a dystopian future in which tens of millions of Americans are sent to reeducation camps. The reality is less dramatic: we've had reeducation camps for decades: public schools, state universities, private secular universities, and "progressive Christian" private colleges. 

Education begins at home

Sure, that's true. However, if so, then why are so many public school educators vehemently against parents having more say in their children's education? Why do so many public school educators oppose, say, school vouchers? Why are so many public school educators against taxpaying parents using their taxes in ways they deem more beneficial to their children? Why do so many public school educators oppose alternative choices including private Christian schools and homeschooling? Why do so many public school educators attempt to promote if not indoctrinate public school kids with worldviews disagreeable to many parents such as Christian parents (e.g. LGBTQ agenda)? Why do so many public school educators stand against Christian parents instilling Christian beliefs and values in their children? Why do so many public school educators regard secular values as the default if not standard? We the people are one nation under God, are we not?

Progressive math

@SeaPubSchools's K-12 math ethnic studies frame work👇. I am really struggling with " who gets to say if an answer is right" in math. @kittypurrzog @wesyanghttps://t.co/yRLgeTVxFw
more info here: https://t.co/89R1bnXvVg pic.twitter.com/t6oQULPBoE

— 王启年 (@AYellowFolk) September 30, 2019

Led by the nose

Robert P. George

There is a widely believed myth that young people, especially college students, are "natural rebels" and "non-conformists." Nothing--absolutely nothing--could be further from the truth. I have taught thousands upon thousands of college students in my thirty-four years as a professor. The vast majority (though, of course, there are exceptions) are the opposite of rebels and non-conformists. They believe what they think they are supposed to believe, and they do what they think they are supposed to do.

Genuine independence of mind is not unheard of among the young, but it is the exception rather than the rule. It can (and should!) be provoked, but it takes effort on the part of a teacher or other person to provoke it. Most kids more or less uncritically--indeed unthinkingly--go along with what they hear, or think they are hearing, from opinion-shaping elites (whether it concerns pronouns, climate change, Halloween costumes, or whatever). Their greatest fear is to be "out of step" with the latest thinking or fashionable attitudes and beliefs. They sometimes censor themselves for fear of accidentally committing thought or speech crimes.

The Woke, and especially those in the vanguard of Wokeness, understand this and take full advantage of it. Of course, they don't acknowledge it, for the simple reason that they massively benefit from it politically. It underwrites "cancel culture" which has become a powerful weapon in the arsenal of Wokeness. And it explains the whole campaign to discredit the concept of freedom of speech (as a "right-wing trope") and to establish a climate on campus and more broadly that discourages (to put it mildly) expressions of dissent from prevailing progressive dogmas. It also explains the indoctrination programs that have become part of Freshman (oops! "First-Year") Orientation at most colleges and universities and continue in various forms through a student's four years. Those in the Woke vanguard know these programs work. Many young people are easily indoctrinated--they think what they're told to think. So everything depends on *what* they are told to think and *who* tells them to think it.

If you suppose that young people are "rebels" and "non-conformists," please just pause for a second to consider the sense of embarrassment and even dread fear a typical teenager experiences when he realizes that the sneakers he's wearing are not the ones all his friends are wearing. Horrors!

The problem with so many of our young people today is not that they are rebellious; it's that they aren't--and lack the courage to be.

The immigrant predicament

In my observation, social climbers often experience a dilemma of their own making. Let's consider two variations;

i) Poor parents, through thrift and grinding work, scrape together enough to send their kids to college. They want the best for their kids. They want their kids go have a better life than the parents had. 

But to their consternation, their kids become snobs who look down on their lower class, uneducated parents. 

ii) Immigrant parents working entry level jobs or a mom-and-pop business, scrimp and save in order to send their kids to college. And not just any old college, but the cream of the cream. They relentless drive their kids to do whatever it takes to get into the most prestigious universities. But the end-result is kids who look down on their parents. The kids move in a different social circle, a higher echelon, where they'd be ashamed to have their parents show up.

In both cases, the parents feel hurt. Yet the parents, by making the elite the goal and the standard of comparison, simultaneously make themselves an embarrassment to their high-achieving progeny. They programmed their kids to be status-conscious snobs. To view their parents as their social and cultural inferiors. 

School discipline

Here's a good example of what's wrong with many inner city schools:

https://quillette.com/2019/02/10/public-educations-dirty-secret/

However, I'd like to discuss something else. To my knowledge, life in the Hood fosters a macho culture. You have to be tough to survive, or you have to act tough to survive. Now, the education establishment already despises natural masculinity. The objective is to psychologically emasculate boys. In addition, the culture of the education establishment means that many male teachers are progressive pansies. If the education establishment is already ill-equipped to deal with natural masculinity, it has no idea how to cope with machismo. You're going to have limp-wristed male teachers whom the boys can't take seriously as real men. And if they don't respect the men, they sure won't respect the women. Moreover, many teachers fear the more aggressive male students, and students can see that. 

It's my impression that in tough schools, the only teacher male students look up to is the coach. My father was a WWII vet. During his career, teaching junior high, I assume many of his male colleagues were WWII vets, Korean war vets, or Viet Nam vets. Ay the risk of overgeneralization, I expect men with that kind of background tend to carry themselves differently than nancy boys with teaching certificates. 

Curved grading

I have a beef about traditional grading. Let's use seminary as an example. Take comprehensive exams. Professors don't expect students to get 100%. Few students get a perfect score. 

Yet that means they don't expect students to remember everything they were taught. But what's the objective of teaching? The objective is not to pass the test, but to master the material. If, however, there's too much material to remember, then students aren't learning what you're teaching. But why teach more than they can learn? Why teach more than they can remember? Shouldn't mastery be the goal?

Consider an exam on internal anatomy, in which a med student scores 90%. Say that's a passing grade. 

Say that means he can identify 90% of your internal organs. It's the other 10% he's confused about. Would you undergo an operation by a surgeon who could identify 90% of your internal organs? What about the pesky 10%? Is that a kidney or the spleen? Flip a coin?

Someone might object that surgical knowledge is a life and death affair, so there's not the same margin for error. But does that mean seminaries teach students lots of irrelevant stuff? 

A better approach might be short, weekly quizzes. Passage requires a perfect score, but they can retake the quiz until they get 100%. At least that way they know it all. They mastered all the material. They remembered what they were taught. They may forget some of that at a later date, but that's better then never knowing it in the first place. 

Then there's the tradition of grading on a curve. That's unfair for two reasons.

To begin with, curved grading is, in effect, a group grade. You're not being graded on the quality of your own performance. Rather, your grade is dependent on how all the other students performed, even though you have no control over their performance. 

But it gets worse. Some students cheat. And that raises the bar for the honest students, since curved grading averages the grades. If students weren't graded on a curve, then each student's grade would be independent of the others. But if some students cheat, that raises the bar for the other students by distorting the curve. Honest students are downgraded by the cheaters. Honest students get a lower grade than they'd otherwise get because they're competing with students who take unfair advantage. 

I don't speak as a disgruntled student. I was a high-performing student in college and seminary. I'm speaking on behalf of other students. 

Dale doubles down on dumbing down

LOL. I'm a cult leader & a big bad bully as I'm not interested in arguing whether his silly insult was an insult. He tried to get back at me, to accuse me of insulting, by googling up a poorly done editorial in my old school's student newspaper! Anything but taking responsibility

— Dale Tuggy (@DaleTuggy) October 15, 2018

Here's what Dale said about business majors in his own words (verbatim):

Let­ter to the Ed­i­tor: Dale Tuggy: A re­sponse to our pre­vi­ous edi­to­r­ial

A re­cent un­signed ed­i­to­r­ial here ex­co­ri­ates me for point­ing out that busi­ness and ed­u­ca­tion stu­dents are, col­lec­tively, weaker stu­dents than the over­all stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. But this is a fact, un­pleas­ant though it may be. The av­er­age SAT and GPA numbers for stu­dents with those ma­jors is lower; look it up. I know that takes longer than lazily lob­bing a charge that my truth-telling is “un­fair, un­jus­ti­fied and cruel,” but still, you should run the num­bers. Point­ing this out is not at­tack­ing those stu­dents, as if they were not try­ing or as if they should­n’t be at Fre­do­nia. Rather, it is to point out that the qual­ity of in­tel­lec­tual life at Fre­do­nia has been de­graded un­der the poor lead­er­ship of pres­i­dents Hefner and Hor­vath.

The in­tel­lec­tual abil­i­ties of your peers here mat­ters a lot to the qual­ity of the ed­u­ca­tion you get here. In point of fact, pro­fessors in many of the more chal­leng­ing dis­ci­plines have been pres­sured by both them­selves and by ad­min­is­tra­tors to dumb down the ma­te­r­ial in classes, so that not too many stu­dents fail. 

https://fredonialeader.org/2018/10/03/letter-to-the-editor-dale-tuggy-a-response-to-our-previous-editorial/

Battle of the sexes

This article supplies useful background info for my post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1990/06/24/sex-lies-and-conversation/01cb17ba-1af7-4bf4-8a02-3d1b6c11648f/?utm_term=.9565c103a700

In social relations, it's natural for an individual to use himself or herself as the frame of reference. The default setting is to relate to another person as if that person were me. How would I respond if I was them? Not putting myself in their shoes but putting them in my shoes.

Normally, men and women are psychologically different (although there's lots of overlap). As a result, it's natural for women to relate to men as if they were women, and vice versa. It's natural for a man to use male psychology as the frame of reference when relating to women. By the same token, it's natural for women to use female psychology when relating to men. 

But because men and women normally have a different psychological makeup, that fosters false expectations, misunderstanding, and frustration. Because members of the same sex tend to think alike, they don't have to adapt to each other to the same degree when relating to members of the opposite sex. Marriage requires a degree of mutual adjustment that isn't required for two or more male roommates.

This is why it's good for husbands to maintain some male friendships outside of marriage, as well as for wives to maintain some female friendships outside of marriage. Your spouse can't fill that role. 

Relating to members of the opposite sex is a skill that has to be learned in a way that's not the case when relating to members of the same sex. In marriage, that requires a willingness on both sides to respect and cherish the psychological differences between men and women, discover the differences, and accommodate when necessary. Strike a balance, but don't require men to be like women or vice versa. That's important in marriage, parenting, and education. 

Feminism doesn't think women should ever have to take male character traits into consideration. That's toxic masculinity. All the change must come from the male side of the ledger. That attitude probably has a mirror image in the reactionary world of the Manosphere. 

To some extent we seem to be evolving into a society of lifelong bachelors and spinsters where women live alone in the company of dogs and cats and cellphones while men live alone in the company of sexbots and computer games. That's what happens when biblical values are abandoned. 

Random thoughts on race

I'll say a few things on the perennial topic of race in American that I don't see discussed:

1. Is it ever appropriate to feel closer to members of your own race? I think that needs to be disambiguated. 

i) It's natural for many people to feel closest to their immediate family. If their family members are the same race, then they will feel closer to members of their own race.

However, that's misleading because the racial component is incidental. You'd have the same dynamic in a biracial family.

ii) I think it's natural for people to feel more at ease around other people who speak the same language. Suppose I'm an Anglo who can speak broken Spanish, or a Latino who can speak broken English. In situations where it's effortful to speak a different language, it's natural to prefer the company of people who speak the same language. You can just relax and have a conversation. You don't struggle to understand or be understood.

So people who belong to the same language group have a natural affinity or solidarity. It's easier for them to be around others who speak the same language. 

But once again the racial component is incidental. There are many examples of different racial or ethnic groups that speak the same language. Likewise, some people are fluently bilingual or polyglot. 

iii) Of course, there exceptions. There are missionaries who learn a second language, spend years working with that people-group. Become very attached to members of that people-group.

Likewise, a guy may fall in love with a woman who's native language is different from his own. Although it's a challenge for him to speak in her language, he will rise to the challenge, and acquire greater fluency by spending ever more time with her.

iv) Another example is a deaf child. The parents and siblings (if any) have to learn sign language. They do that because the familial bond is stronger than the linguistic bond. 

v) Friendship is based on more than a common language. People who dislike each other can have a common language. 

2. Given my views on illegal immigration, a friend once asked me if I thought we had a duty to report illegals to the authorities.

i) For the record, my objection to illegal immigration is that it results in things like ID theft of SS numbers, emergency rooms going bankrupt, illegals going on public assistance (for which taxpayers foot the bills), &c.  

ii) If I recall, I said private citizens aren't police informants. We don't have a civic duty to spy for the police. 

Now, if I was driving through my neighborhood and I saw a burglar breaking into a house, I'd report that. But what I do or don't report is a question of personal discretion.

For instance, kids violate ordinances about not skating in this or that place. Obviously, that's not the sort of thing I'd report. Indeed, we should be grateful when kids do something that innocuous. Same thing with people smoking in a public park. Stupid ordinances. 

iii) But there's another distinction. Years ago, Linda Chavez had to withdraw her nomination due to a "nannygate scandal". Now, I do think public officials ought to obey the laws they impose on the governed. 

That said, it isn't hypocritical to treat friends differently than strangers. Indeed, the essence of friendship is to give friends exceptional treatment. You do favors for a friend that you don't necessarily do for strangers. You make exceptions for a friend that you don't necessarily make for strangers. 

Hence, it wouldn't be hypocritical to oppose illegal immigration as a matter of policy, even if I treated certain illegals I personally know differently. Policy is about strangers, not individual friends. And, of course, the scale is completely different.  

3. Systematic discrimination against Asian students has been practiced by Ivy League universities.  My own position is that if, say, Asian-Americans got 80% of the slots at the Ivy Leagues because they outperform other ethnic groups, that's the way a competitive system is supposed to work. The best rise to the top. 

It's no different than sports. In sports, we don't take points off a winning team because it wins too often, and give those points to the losing team to artificially even the score. 

Asian-Americans Are Finally Cluing Into The Racism Underlying Identity Politics

https://thefederalist.com/2018/06/19/asian-americans-finally-cluing-racism-underlying-identity-politics/

Teens with guns

I going to make a couple of loosely related observations about schoolyard snipers. Many advocates of "sensible gun control" seem to think we need to keep guns out of the hands of teenagers, or at the very least, military grade weapons. 

1. Some people think the solution, or at least one solution, is to have police officers permanently stationed in public schools. In that regard I'd simply point out that many many teenage boys can easily subdue and disarm a policewoman. I don't mean if her gun is drawn. I mean in the more casual atmosphere of a high school, where police officers wouldn't maintain the same physical distance or be on guard in the same way if they were walking the beat and interacting with strangers (which they usually do in pairs). They see these students everyday. 

A boy who had designs on shooting his classmates wouldn't have to smuggle a gun through metal detectors. There'd already be police firearms on site. The policewoman would be the armory. So long as he had the ability to overpower her and take her gun away, that's all he needs. 

2. Teenagers regularly enlist in the military. You can volunteer at 18, or join at 17 with parental permission. I don't have these statistics at my fingertips, but just since the advent of the all-voluntary military, we've probably had hundreds of thousands of teenagers (junior NCOs) with access to military grade weaponry. And that's not counting teenage draftees during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. I'm guessing we've had millions of teenagers with access to military grade weaponry over the decades. How many of them have perpetrated domestic mass shootings? Surely the percentage is infinitesimal. Likewise, you can go straight from high school to police academy, which gives cadets access to police firearms. 

Confessional seminaries

I'd like to discuss some of the moral permutations of confessional seminaries (as well as confessional colleges).

i) Confessional seminaries are justifiable, and even necessary. The purpose of a Christian seminary is to transmit the faith to the next generation. The faculty should be Christian. Moreover, students should know what to expect.

However, that general principle is subject to some caveats and complications.

ii) Suppose an applicant is hired on the basis of the institution's current statement of faith. Suppose, after he gets the job, the institution amends the statement of faith. Should he be fired if he dissents from the policy change? 

That depends. In some situations, that's clearly unfair. He wasn't hired on those terms, so he shouldn't be fired on those terms. He was hired based on a mutual understanding and agreement. To unilaterally changes the rules in the middle of the game may well be unjust. 

iii) On the other hand, because the political and theological climate changes over time, new issues may arise that weren't on the radar when the statement of faith was originally formulated. In some cases, it wouldn't be possible to anticipate those developments. In other cases, it was just understood back then that those were out-of-bounds.

So there are situations in which it's proper and necessary for a confessional institution to revise the statement of faith. I can't say in the abstract if that's good or bad, because it depends on the specifics. Warranted examples include Bryan College and Cedarville on the historical Adam. 

iv) In addition, sometimes the threat comes from the left rather than the right. Robert Gagnon lost his job because he was well to the right of his denomination and its flagship seminary. It was inevitable that this would come to a head. He was out of step with the liberal trajectory of the PC-USA. 

v) Sometimes, though, the ground can shift under faculty, not due to a formal change in the statement of faith, but due to a change in the ecclesiastical climate. Power-brokers in the denomination may exert great influence and pressure, which changes what is tolerated in practice, regardless of what is tolerated on paper. That's an unwritten code which may jeopardize the job security of faculty. 

Likewise, if the board rubber-stamps the college or seminary president, then he's a law unto himself. (But a potential check is the alumni, especially the donor base.) 

By "power-brokers," I have in mind players like Ligon Duncan, Albert Mohler, Russell Moore, and Paige Patterson. 

vi) In situations like that, a professor may find himself in something of a moral bind. He has prior obligations to his dependents. So he may prevaricate about his true position if his family's financial security is threatened by ex post facto changes. 

I think lying is prima facie wrong, but there are situations where that's overridden by a higher obligation. And that distinction can be consistent with deontological ethics, viz. threshold deontology.

I have in mind situations like Dembski found himself mired in vis-a-vis Paige Patterson. 

vii) If a professor ceases to believe the statement of faith in one or more respects, then as a rule he should resign or be fired. I have no sympathy for Christian college or seminary professors who suffer an intellectual crisis of faith. By that point in their intellectual development, they should be familiar with the stock objections to Christianity, and have resolved them to their personal satisfaction.

Sometimes, though, a crisis of faith may be triggered by personal tragedy. That goes to the emotional problem of suffering rather than the intellectual problem of suffering.

In that case, I don't think they should be summarily dismissed. They must continue to teach orthodox theology. They shouldn't air their doubts with students, much less use the classroom as a platform to attack Christianity.

But according to the "church as hospital" model, I think that should be treated as much as possible as a pastoral issue, like nursing a sick patient back to health. I have in mind the situation of Gary Habermas.