Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Does brain death equal death?
Critical care physician Scott Aberegg writes about the Jahi McMath case.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Says ‘Nyet’ to Papacy
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| Russian Patriarch Says "Nyet" to Pope |
The Italian journalist Sandro Magister has published an article entitled The Russian Veto against Francis and Bartholomew, which essentially says “Nyet” to the famous “Ravenna Document”, which looked at how the church was governed in the early centuries”, “a path” which Bergoglio has said “we must continue along”.
In two subsequent meetings of the group that produced this Ravenna Document (the Russians were not present at the first one), held in Cyprus in 2009 and in Vienna in 2010 “the objections of the Russian Church were so many and of such a nature as to block any reconciliation between the two sides”.
Now, I view the notion of “bishops” and “apostolic succession” as second century developments that have no authority whatsoever on believers following that period (although history has created the illusion that these men had more importance than they actually had).
James White and Michael Kruger Discuss Roman Catholicism
I heard the terms "serious category mistakes" and "remarkable revisionism" here, in this discussion between James White and Michael Kruger, in response to some Roman Catholic discussions of how the canon of the New Testament is viewed.
We have the resources today to understand who's right and who's wrong. It is my conviction that the more that we look into these things, the more vacuous the Roman Catholic accounting of itself is shown to be.
(There is a long clip from "Catholic Answers", which is broken down and discussed later. If you'd like to get to the actual discussion, skip to about the 20:00 mark in the video)
We have the resources today to understand who's right and who's wrong. It is my conviction that the more that we look into these things, the more vacuous the Roman Catholic accounting of itself is shown to be.
(There is a long clip from "Catholic Answers", which is broken down and discussed later. If you'd like to get to the actual discussion, skip to about the 20:00 mark in the video)
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Reefer madness
Joe Carter recently did a post on whether smoking pot is sinful:
He used an argument from analogy. I think his basic argument is sound. However, the ensuing comment thread is a swamp of moral confusion. In this post I'll attempt to draw some morally salient distinctions. I expect many parents or pastors would lose the argument against pot smoking because of facile counterexamples. So it's important to beef up the argument.
Of course, some people will resort to any excuse to smoke pot.
1) Some antinomians bandy the charge of "legalism." But let's define legalism:
i) The notion that we can justify ourselves with God through virtuous activity
ii) Inventing duties or prohibitions that lack divine warrant
2) Some critics accuse Christians of hypocrisy for exempting their own lifestyle choices. But even if that's sometimes true, that doesn't validate your lifestyle choices.
3) Some activities are sinful. Some activities are intrinsically evil.
4 ) However, it isn't necessary to always frame the issue in terms of what's strictly moral or immoral. We can also frame some issues in terms of what's prudent or imprudent. What is the objective? What are the likely consequences? What are the risk factors? What's the potential benefit? Is there a greater risk for a lesser gain over against a greater gain for a lesser risk?
5) Apropos (4), it's often a matter of degree. Something maybe harmless or beneficial in moderation, but harmful if carried to a greater extreme.
6) As Christians, we have a general duty to be faithful stewards of our time, abilities, and opportunities. Our life is not our own.
7) Conversely, since human mortality is unavoidable, many people make a calculated decision to potentially shave a few years off their lifespan in exchange for a more enjoyable life. That's a rational decision.
8) There's a difference between cultivating a healthy lifestyle and cultivating a hazardous lifestyle. For instance, there's a middle ground between being a health nut and being a drug addict.
9) Someone with dependents has greater responsibilities than someone without dependents.
10) We ought to distinguish between temporary impairment and permanent impairment. Does a particular recreational activity carry a significant risk of permanent impairment?
11) There are different kinds of damage we can do to our bodies. Some damage is worse than others. Damage to vital organs. Brain damage. Memory. Reflexes.
12) Is a particular activity addictive? Do you control it, or does it control you?
13) There are tradeoffs. Prescription painkillers can be addictive. They can lead to deleterious side-effects. However, that has to be offset by considering the impact of chronic pain. Which is worse? Same thing with psychotropic drugs to treat mental illness. Or cancer therapy. Or medication for Parkinson's Disease.
14) There's nothing inherently wrong with ingesting mood-altering substances (e.g. alcohol). Whether that's right or wrong, prudent or imprudent, depends on additional considerations.
15) Some mind- or mood-altering substances (e.g. coffee) can enhance rather than impair performance. On the other hand, some performance-enhancing substances (e.g. anabolic steroids) can do long-term damage.
16) Whether impairment is prudent or imprudent also depends on the setting. Is it safe? Will that endanger you or others?
Loss of self-control isn't inherent wrong. Take general anesthetic for surgery. But that's a special case. That's not undergoing sedation for its own sake, but as a means to an end.
17) Contact sports like football aren't risk-free. On the other hand, many boys will indulge in high-risk behavior anyway, so it may be better to redirect their reckless behavior in a controlled setting where the risk is minimized. And team sports can also confer social benefits (e.g. camaraderie). So it's a risk/benefit calculus.
18) As a rule, tobacco products are harmful. To some extent that depends on the degree of intake (frequency, duration). Likewise, tobacco products are addictive.
On the other hand, some (many?) individuals are more productive due to artificial stimulants like caffeine and nicotine.
19) Obesity can be harmful. But that's a matter of degree.
20) The fact that marijuana is "natural" or "organic" doesn't ipso facto make it morally permissible. What is edible for one species may be inedible or poisonous for another species. Mushrooms are natural, but some mushrooms (e.g. the Death Cap) are toxic to humans.
21) Is marijuana a gateway drug to even more harmful drugs? That's not just a slippery slope argument. Something can be harmful it its own right, yet foster an appetite for even more dangerous activities.
Distant starlight
Rupert Sheldrake
In my talk I said that the published values of the speed of light dropped by about 20 km/sec between 1928 and 1945. Carroll’s “careful rebuttal” consisted of a table copied from Wikipedia showing the speed of light at different dates, with a gap between 1926 and 1950, omitting the very period I referred to. His other reference (http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/speedoflight.html) does indeed give two values for the speed of light in this period, in 1928 and 1932-35, and sure enough, they were 20 and 24km/sec lower than the previous value, and 14 and 18 km/sec lower than the value from 1947 onwards.
1926: 299,7981928: 299,7781932-5: 299,7741947: 299,792
In my talk I suggest how a re-examination of existing data could resolve whether large continuing variations in the Universal Gravitational Constant, G, are merely errors, as usually assumed, or whether they show correlations between different labs that might have important scientific implications hitherto ignored.
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/14/open-for-discussion-graham-hancock-and-rupert-sheldrake/
A stock objection to young-earth creationism is the so-called problem of distant starlight. This presumes that the speed of light is constant. But Sheldrake draws attention to discrepancies in the observational data. Does this mean our measurements are inaccurate, or does it mean the speed of light is, in fact, variable? If the latter, then that complicates the appeal to distant starlight.
Reasons to believe
In Divine Hiddenness (esp. chapter 1), Schellenberg argues that God would provide us with good reason to think he exists because (i) he'd want to be in a personal relationship with us which requires we believe in him, and (ii) because being perfectly good, he wouldn't deceive us into thinking he exists on false or inadequate grounds.
But, surely...this argument could not be any of the tremendously technical arguments for God's existence that plauge analytic philosophy, such as Maydole's Ontological Argument. Such reasons for belief are completely inaccessible to most people, who simply don't have the time to learn things like advanced logic, or the training to follow cutting-edge theoretical physics.
Any god that requires people to possess such esoteric knowledge in order to believe in him obviously doesn't want anyone believing in him. God would make good reasons for believing in him more available, or accessible to us. I'm not saying he'd make it easy, but he likewise wouldn't predicate it on understanding things like Thomistic metaphysics, or extremely specialized fields such New Testament scholarship or microbiology. In a word, God would not write the reason(s) for believing he exists in legalese.
So far, I think I could get most folks on board with me. But, a problem arises: the arguments for believing in God have become so darned technical for good reasons, one of which is because after hundreds of years of thinking about them, substantive objections have been raised that required deeper reflection and refinement. Think of how simple the Kalam cosmological argument can be stated, but how remarkably technical debates over its premises can get.
In other words, the simple arguments for God aren't any good! As I suggested in my previous post, if there were some dinky little syllogism that showed atheism to be false, no philosopher would subscribe to atheism! Thus, if there are any good reasons to believe in God, they must be inaccessible to most people.
This generates the following argument against God's existence:
1. If God exists, then there are good reasons to believe in God that most people have access to.2. But, most people don't have access to good reasons for believing in God.3. Therefore, God does not exist.
http://truthishonest.blogspot.com/2014/01/argument-from-inaccessibility.html
This fails to distinguish between a good reason and a good argument. Humans have good informal reasons for many of the things we believe. But many of us would be unable to soundly argue for our reasonable beliefs. Yet, in principle, a good reason can be turned into a good argument.
As long as the reason you believe in something can, in principle, be turned into a sound formal argument, then you have a solid reason for what you believe.
Suppose the simple arguments for God aren't any good. That doesn't mean the simple reasons we have or give for believing in God aren't any good.
Michael Kruger discusses Roman Catholicism and the NT Canon: Today on the Dividing Line with James White
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| "I agree with Bart Ehrman" |
Roman Catholicism and the NT Canon: Today on the Dividing Line with James White. Dr. Kruger writes:
My new book, The Question of Canon, is designed to challenge a particular approach to the New Testament canon that is prevalent in the modern academy. It is the approach that suggests that in the earliest stages of Christianity the canon was in disarray; the canonical process was a wide-open affair where no one agreed on much of anything and no one was able to distinguish canonical books from apocryphal ones.
What is ironic about this critical approach is that it has an unexpected ally: Roman Catholicism. The Catholic claim is remarkably similar to the one of critical scholars (at least in its premise). Both claim that the canonical situation in early Christianity was in disarray and that there was no way to distinguish canonical books from apocryphal books. It’s just that modern scholars use this as a justification to reject the canon altogether, whereas Catholics use this as a justification for why we need an infallible church to tell us which books are in the canon. But, both groups share the same premise.
In my interactions with Catholics over the years, I have raised this issue. I have pointed out that many of the Roman Catholic apologists are essentially making the same argument as Bart Ehrman. They are trying to show that the canon was a mess so that they can argue the only solution is to lean on papal authority (of course, Ehrman doesn’t take this second step). Admittedly, this has been a bit discouraging. I would have hoped that Protestants and Catholics could at least team up to respond to the criticisms of scholars like Ehrman.
In order to address the difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic views of canon, I will be joining James White on his Dividing Line program today at 1PM EST. It is a live program, so tune in if you are able!
Understanding Scripture: “What’s up with head coverings and eating blood?”
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| How to find the knowledge of God. |
I’m going to go into some depth here, because if you truly want to understand the Scriptures, the Protestant principles, as articulated by the Reformers, genuinely shed light and give understanding, in ways and places that the Roman Catholic teachings have only served to confuse things.
[I also saw a very good opportunity here to distinguish between different kinds of “traditions”, and how different the “traditions” Paul is talking about are from the “living Tradition” of the Roman Catholic Church.]
Cletus van Damme (CVD)
Posted January 6, 2014 at 1:39 pm | Permalink
Monday, January 06, 2014
Getting high
Two states have legalized marijuana use. On the one hand, there's a libertarian argument for this trend. The "war on drugs" has led to the paramilitarization of the police. The police are increasingly like a foreign occupation force. That's a bad development.
On the other hand, legalizing marijuana will likely make the streets more dangerous. Drinking in moderation doesn't seriously impair your faculties. But from what I've read, it takes very little marijuana intake to seriously impair your faculties. In the nature of the case, if you're under the influence, you're a poor judge of your faculties.
So it's easy to imagine many more DIU incidents with the legalization of marijuana. More innocent drivers, pedestrians, and bikers killed or maimed by other drivers who had a few puffs on a joint, then got behind the steering wheel.
I also expect this will hike car insurance and accident insurance for everyone.
Finally, there's the question of "medical marijuana." In principle, I'm not opposed to medical marijuana if, in fact, that provides symptom relief that's unavailable by other means.
However, I think "medical marijuana" is usually a sentimental trojan horse to legalize marijuana in general. Also, I've never read or heard this discussed by medical experts who specializes in pain management.
How Rome Became an Empire
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| It took centuries for Rome to dominate its neighboring cities in Italy (c. 300 B.C.) |
This is from F.F. Bruce’s “New Testament History” (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., ©1969):
[In 66 B.C.], the Roman Senate decided to make an end of the Mithridatic war once and for all [it had been dragging on for several decades], and entrusted the conduct of operations to Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), who was given an unlimited command over all the Roman forces in the east in order to press the war to a successful conclusion. …
The reputation of the Romans for rapacity [“aggressive greed”] had preceded them in the new areas which they now occupied. Mithridates had done his best, during his twenty-five years of intermittent war with the Romans, to prejudice his allies and neighbours against them. One sample of his anti-Roman propaganda is preserved in his letter to Arsaces XII, king of Parthia (c. 69 B.C.):
Sunday, January 05, 2014
Science & worldview
His dissertation was a statistical study of accumulated fossil data, "an estimation of true taxonomic duration from fossil occurrence data." It asked the question, "Give our actual fossil record, how can we estimate when these organisms actually began to exist and when they became extinct?" After [Kurt] Wise presented his work, one of his peers said, according to Wise, "It's obvious this worked had to be done. We see that now, but we would never have done it. Your creationist worldview made you see things differently. T. Stafford, ed. The Adam Quest (T. Nelson 2013), 20.
What's a scientific explanation?
i) Let's begin with some stereotypes. There's the familiar narrative of the boy who's raised in a "fundamentalist church," but loses his faith in Scripture when he goes to college and studies science.
Likewise, secular science regards creationism and intelligent design theory as ad hoc. These aren't driven by the evidence. Rather, they try to find flaws in conventional science, and propose possible alternative explanations which are merely consistent with the evidence.
Moreover, when the evidence runs out or goes against them, they resort to the deus ex machina. Miracles are consistent with anything. Given a miracle, anything can happen.
Although that's a hostile, outsider characterization of creationism and intelligent design theory, there are creationists who, to some extent, have the same misgivings. Take the so-called problem of distant starlight. A popular creationist explanation appeals to mature creation. However, some creation scientists dislike that explanation because it's a miraculous explanation rather than a scientific explanation. They are trained scientists, and they want to defend creationism on scientific grounds.
ii) There's a grain of truth to these objections, but they are one-sided. If, in fact, God-did-it, then to exclude God from the explanation is special pleading. If, in fact, God-did-it, then a naturalistic alternative is ad hoc.
iii) This also goes to the thorny question of what constitutes a scientific explanation. Atheists think divine agency renders an explanation unscientific. And we'd expect atheists to take that position. But I also find similar confusion among some creationists. Both sides are unclear on how to demarcate a scientific explanation from a miraculous explanation.
Atheists like Lewontin take the position that once you allow a divine foot in the door, anything goes. That, however, is a caricature of the miraculous.
The definition of a scientific explanation is bound up with the definition of a miracle. These are correlative questions. Let's consider two potential criteria:
a) Causal continuity.
A presupposition of science is that the same causes yield the same effects. That also supplies a principle of predictability. Given the same cause, the same effect will result.
And that also supplies a basis for interpolations and extrapolations. We infer missing links. We trace the effect back to the cause through a series of intervening processes or events. The principle is symmetrical and reversible. If the same causes entail the same effects, then the same effects entail the same causes.
But that's consistent with miracles. When a given outcome is the result of a miracle, you have a different result because you have a different cause. A cause that bypasses the ordinary chain of cause and effect (on a classic definition of a miracle).
Take a terminal cancer patient who goes into spontaneous remission in answer to prayer. That doesn't subvert medical science. Absent divine intercession, the same causes have the same effects. It simply interjects a new factor, outside the chain of cause and effect, into the transaction. It breaks into the chain of cause and effect, but the chain resumes after divine intercession.
In addition, some miracles result from a continuous chain of physical cause and effect. Take Ahab's "accidental" death by a random arrow (1 Kgs 22). At one level, that was perfectly natural. The end-result of natural means. Yet it was a prearranged event.
b) Physical causation
A presupposition of secular science is that causes are physical. A natural explanation involves physical causes.
This stands in contrast to mental causation. Physical causes are unintelligent forces or processes. Often inanimate.
Because physical causes are unintelligent, they are invariant. They operate automatically, with mechanical regularity–like a programmed result.
From a Christian standpoint, that's often the case, although that's not a matter of principle. In ordinary providence, things normally happen that way. And that also supplies the basis for linear extrapolations and postulated interpolations.
But in the biblical worldview, causation isn't confined to physical causation. In addition, there is mental causation. Personal agents who have the ability to simply will things to happen.
That does introduce an unpredictable element into the equation. This means that in some cases we can't say with confidence how something happened–especially events where there were no human observers. We can't be sure if it happened naturally or supernaturally.
I'd add that there's abundant evidence for miracles, as well as the paranormal. Indeed, this is underreported.
So a Christian isn't guilty of special pleading when he takes this additional factor into consideration. It isn't just a face-saving explanation. Rather, it's making allowance for genuine imponderables. In many cases, that's not something you or he can rationally rule out.
Nim Chimpsky
i) Why are chimps and humans so alike? The evolutionary explanation is that they share a last common ancestor.
Were it not for theological reservations, that might seem like a plausible, straightforward explanation. At the same time, evolutionary explanations can be deceptively easy and vacuous. Take a comparison: why are different conifer species so alike? Well, I suppose a Darwinian could posit common ancestry, but the more direct explanation, the reason with the most explanatory power, isn't common ancestry but adaptation (or design) to a common environment. Conifers are alike because they reflect the same problem-solving strategy for survival in higher latitudes. To attribute this to common ancestry would be a "science-stopper."
ii) From a Christian perspective, what's the alternative explanation for the similarity between man and chimp? I've already offered a general explanation:
Now I'd like to suggest a more specific (but related) explanation. Let's take a comparison. Instead of asking, why did God make men and chimps so alike, let us ask why God make twins so alike?
Twins are strikingly alike in some basic ways. This begins with their fundamental genetic makeup. In addition, they have the same environment. Same formative experience. They are raised by the same parents at the same time. They live in the same time and place. Attend the same schools. Because parents can't tell them apart, they treat each twin the same way. So twins have the same nature and nurture.
Sometimes the affinity goes deeper. A friend of mine was telling me how he and his twin brother are synchronized to wake up at the same time. If his brother's work schedule changes, they both wake up at that new time. Not based on an alarm clock, but some internal clock they share in common.
Yet despite how much twins have in common, they often have very different personalities. (BTW, this is easier to account for on dualism.) And it's because twins are so similar in others respects that this makes their dissimilarities so striking. Their similarities supply the contrasting background against which we can more clearly observe the dissimilarities.
By the same token, what's more striking about chimps and humans is how radically different we are despite how much we have in common. And suppose God makes some creatures alike to highlight how unalike they can still be in spite of their extensive commonalities? We expect unlike things to be unalike. What's more profound is how like things can be unalike. That illustrates the wisdom of God, by creating diversity within very narrow parameters. It's the commonalities that make the variations stand out.
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