Cardinal Burke: “YOU HAVE WON $25 MILLION DOLLARS”

Oh, wait. It’s NOT QUITE what he said. However, given the “circumspect” nature of how Roman prelates talk, he may as well have said something very much like that. In fact, the actual headline began:

Cardinal Burke: ‘I will resist’ the Pope … .

But notice the headline: it’s conditional. It’s written in the same way that the Publisher’s Clearinghouse writes their headlines: “If you return the winning number to us, we'll tell you that 'YOU HAVE WON $25 MILLION DOLLARS'.”

Of course, it’s true that guys like Kasper are looking for ways to “reformulate positively” this dogma. And so, if they come up with some convoluted explication (as they had done with the “outside the church” rule), then Burke (and the Roman apologists with him) can say, with relief, “THE POPE UPHOLDS ROMAN CATHOLIC DOGMA”. Whoopee.

The article said:

February 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Vatican watchers were surprised this weekend when Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the leading voices for orthodoxy in the Church, said he would be willing to “resist” Pope Francis if the pontiff were to attempt to change the practice of the Church in denying Communion to those in “second marriages.”

Speaking to France2 television, Burke, who was recently removed by Francis as head of the Church’s highest marriage court, said, moreover, that there was no analogy between homosexual activity and marriage.

“I cannot accept that Communion can be given to a person in an irregular union because it is adultery,” the American cardinal said. “On the question of people of the same sex, this has nothing to do with marriage. This is an affliction suffered by some people whereby they are attracted against nature sexually to people of the same sex.”

Asked, “If, perchance, the pope will persist in this direction, what will you do?” Cardinal Burke replied, “I shall resist, I can do nothing else. There is no doubt that it is a difficult time; this is clear, this is clear.” The cardinal agreed that the situation is “painful” and “worrisome”…

Someone posited somewhere that now that Burke was in charge of the Order of Malta, and free from “official” duties, that he “would enjoy a freedom that he did not have” in his more official positions.

Libertarian Calvinism?

"Libertarian Calvinism?" by Prof. James Anderson.

The personhood criterion

One popular argument for abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia is the personhood criterion. In principle, this has the added advantage of demarcating those who enjoy human rights (e.g. women) from those who don't (e.g. babies, the developmentally disabled, the senile).

If you're a feminist, that kills two birds with one stone by conferring rights on women, as persons, while dehumanizing their babies, who (allegedly) lack personhood.

However, this argument either proves too much or too little. Physicalism implies a reductionistic view of human nature. If human beings are simply organized matter, it's hard to embed personhood in that framework. If, therefore, you combine the personhood criterion with physicalism, you end up denying women's rights or human rights generally. For instance:

It also seems to be the case that some forms of Scientific Naturalism are committed to the denial of “persons as substantive selves that essentially possess a first-person point of view” (See Dennett 2006, 107). Daniel Dennett, for example, holds that persons will not be part of the ultimately true scientific account of things. Dennett holds that to think of humans as persons is simply to adopt a certain “stance” toward them that he calls the “intentional stance,” but it is clear that the kind of picture of humans we get when we think of them in this way does not correspond with their intrinsic metaphysical properties. It is not clear how systems towards which we adopt an “intentional stance” could be truly autonomous and thus have the kind of value Kant believes human persons have. 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/#ArgHumDigWor

Impediments to secular ethics

Street presents the moral realist with a dilemma posed by the question as to how our human evaluative beliefs are related to human evolution. It is clear, she believes, that evolution has strongly shaped our evaluative attitudes. The question concerns how those attitudes are related to the objective evaluative truths accepted by the realist. If the realist holds that there is no relation between such truths and our evaluative attitudes, then this implies that “most of our evaluative judgments are off track due to the distorting influence of Darwinian processes.” The other alternative for the realist is to claim that there is a relationship, and thus that is not an accident or miracle that our evaluative beliefs track the objective truths. However, this view, Street claims, is scientifically implausible. Street argues therefore that an evolutionary story about how we came to make the moral judgments we make undermines confidence in the objective truth of those judgments. Street's argument is of course controversial and thinkers such as Erik Wielenberg (2014) have argued against evolutionary debunking arguments. Still, many regard such arguments as problematic for morality, particularly when developed as a “global” argument (Kahane, 2010). 

Moral realists such as David Enoch (2011) have attempted to respond to Street's argument, though Enoch acknowledges its force and evidently has some worries about the strength of his reply. However, it is not hard to see that a good deal of the force of Street's argument stems from the assumption that naturalism is true, and therefore that the evolutionary process is one that is unguided. It does appear that in a naturalistic universe we would expect a process of Darwinian evolution to select for a propensity for moral judgments that track survival and not objective moral truths. Mark Linville (2009, 391–446) has developed a detailed argument for the claim that it is difficult for metaphysical naturalists to develop a plausible evolutionary story as to how our moral judgments could have epistemological warrant.  

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/#ArgMorKnoAwa 

Michael Martin (2002), for example, has tried to suggest that moral judgments can be analyzed as the feelings of approval or disapproval of a perfectly impartial and informed observer. Linville (2009) objects that it is not clear how the feelings of such an observer could constitute the intrinsic worth of a person, since one would think that intrinsic properties would be non-relational and mind-independent. In any case, Linville notes that a “Euthyphro” problem lurks for such an ideal observer theory, since one would think that such an observer would judge a person to be intrinsically valuable because the person has intrinsic value. 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/#ArgHumDigWor 

Reframing the church’s debate on homosexuality

I think most of Lee's review is useful except for the bit about "pastoral accommodation":

http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2015/01/2014-reading-contemporary-issues-homosexuality.html

Proctoclysis

I'm going to comment on an article by apostate atheist Hector Avalos:

http://amestrib.com/opinion/hector-avalos-torturing-faith

Avalos uses the Senate "torture" report as a pretext to bash Christians. 

Muslim-Christian relations took another painful turn when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released in December its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. 

Considering the fact that Muslim regimes routinely torture Muslims, why should our treatment of illegal Muslim combatants bother them? Moreover, Muslim regimes engage in classic torture, not the borderline cases cited by critics of US policy. 

Then there was “forced rectal feeding,” which the CIA said was “medically necessary” for those refusing to eat. 

I) One problem is that critics of "torture" routinely fail to distinguish between interrogation and prisoner abuse. 

ii) In addition, this was force-feeding in response to a hunger strike. It wasn't about interrogation. 

So this is really an issue about the ethics of force-feeding. If a prisoner goes on a hunger strike, should he be force-fed, or should he be allowed to commit suicide in captivity? That's a separate ethical issue unto itself.

iii) From what I've read, proctoclysis is, in fact, a legitimate medical procedure. It's my understanding that this a fairly quaint medical procedure. It's not the sort of thing that a modern, well-equipped hospital would normally use. But it's something that a medical missionary in a Third World backwater might have to resort to. According to UpToDate (a standard medical resource):

[P]roctoclysis can be a safe and effective technique for patients who need parenteral hydration, have no tumor-related involvement of the colon, and are unable to receive fluid hydration by other routes as a result of either contraindications or lack of resources. Proctoclysis involves minimal cost, does not need any sterile device or manipulation, and can be implemented intermittently over four hours infusions by non-professionals in the home, particularly when family members can be involved in the delivery of physical care. Its greatest potential application may lie in developing countries or rural areas where there is no access to health care workers capable of starting and maintaining an intravenous or subcutaneous infusion, and where access to sterile needles, fluids, and tubing may be too expensive.

I think men have a natural aversion to anyone messing with that part of their anatomy. Hence all the jokes about proctology. 

And I think that instinctive revulsion comes into play when they read about the "torture" report. 

However, I doubt medical professionals (doctors, nurses) would bat an eye. They have to perform a number of routine procedures involving that unglamorous part of the anatomy.

I also think that women are more down to earth than men in some respects while men are more down to earth than women in other respects. 

Religion also inserts itself into the issue in other ways. Shortly after the publication of the Report, the Washington Post and ABC News conducted a poll on America’s attitude toward torture.
That poll found that 69 percent of white Evangelical Protestants and 68 percent of white Catholics found torture “justified”, whether “sometimes” or “often.” By comparison 40 percent of those with “no religion” found torture justified whether it was sometimes or often.
About 32 percent of those with no religion said that torture was “never justified” compared to only 11 percent of white evangelical protestants, 21 percent of white non-evangelical protestants, and 12 percent of white Catholics.

i) Given the fact that Avalos is an avowed moral relativist, his disapproval is incoherent. He summarily disqualifies himself from rendering value-judgments.

ii) Some atheists consider torture to be morally permissible or even obligatory under special circumstances. For instance: 

http://keithburgess-jackson.typepad.com/blog/2015/01/torture.html

Part of the reason for the disparity between Christian and non-religious attitudes toward torture is that Christianity and torture have a lengthy dolorous history.

Secularism and torture have a lengthy dolorous history. To take just one example, consider the Red Terror under Trotsky and Lenin.

Some Christians who support torture note that the Bible sometimes accepts it. For example, Exodus 21:20-21 (RSV) states: “When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money.”

i) That's not torture.

ii) I've discussed that text:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/09/flogging.html

According to Revelation 9:3-6 (RSV), the author envisioned creatures that would harm “only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads; they were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion, when it stings a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them.”

That takes place in a vision. 

The whole concept of hell is premised on the idea that it is justified to torture people eternally for displeasing the biblical god. 

Only if you assume that hell is a torture chamber. And it's for more than "displeasing" God.

The so-called Inquisition deployed horrific techniques against heretics.

That reflects a number of errors in Roman Catholic theology. I'm not Catholic. 

America is asking itself anew what ends will justify the means, and it is contemplating whether what is biblically, religiously, or legally acceptable is also moral.
For now, the fact that so many Christians in America accept the torture of Muslims, who believe that they are defending their faith, may only fuel the jihadists’ belief that they are in the midst of a Christian-Muslim war.

He's imputing his own definition of "torture" to Christians, then acting as if they agree on his definition. 

Obama's moral idiocy

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/398277/print

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/398302/print

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/398218/print

Talk on evidentialism

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/02/talk_on_evidentialism_now_onli.html

The "Deuteronomic history"

I'll comment on a post by Arminian theologian Randal Rauser:

http://randalrauser.com/2015/02/did-god-really-command-genocide-a-review-part-3/

The problem is that they never address the glaring question: why think God ever uttered these commands as they are recorded? 

Why think this happened…? 

In order to appreciate the knotty nature of this historical question, consider how evangelical apologists typically press the importance of history, particularly as it regards the resurrection of Jesus. Evangelical apologists are keen to argue that New Testament documents (e.g. the creedal formula in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5) bring us to within years of the purported events themselves. (As an introduction to this literature one might begin with Paul Copan’s treatment of the resurrection in Loving Wisdom: Christian Philosophy of Religion (Chalice Press, 2007), 116 ff.) 

The contrast with the Deuteronomic history could hardly be greater for here the gap between event and report shifts from years (as in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5) or decades (as in the Synoptic gospels) to centuries. Philip Jenkins explains:

“Even by the most optimistic estimates, J [According to the Documentary Hypothesis “J” is the Yahwist source, one of four sources that comprise the Torah] would not have been written down until 900 or 850. Deuteronomy itself did not take its final form until five hundred years after the massacre of King Sihon and his subjects. That book’s authors were as far removed from the conquest as we today are from the time of Martin Luther or Christopher Columbus. Any approach to Deuteronomy or Joshua has to read it in the context of around 700 BCE, or even later, not of 1200.” (Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (HarperOne, 20011), 53-54, emphasis added.) 

Think about that: the proximity of the events narrated in the Deuteronomic history to the final form of the texts is equivalent to the distance from Christopher Columbus to today! Given that the period covered by the narrative occurred centuries earlier than the final form of the Deuteronomic history, one would think Copan and Flannagan would be centrally concerned with the historical question: Do we have a historical ground to think these events occurred? Instead, Copan and Flannagan appear to accept the basic historical veracity of the Deuteronomic history in much the same way they would accept the reliability of the Gospels and Acts.

Three basic problems:

i) The argument is circular. Jenkins (whose views Rauser rubber-stamps) simply denies the historical setting of the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch). He takes the Documentary Hypothesis for granted. He then cites his disbelief in the ostensible setting of the Pentateuch as justification for disbelieving the historicity or historical accuracy of the Pentateuch. 

But why should we have more confidence in the Documentary Hypothesis than the self-witness of the Pentateuch? The Documentary Hypothesis is a conjectural reconstruction by modern scholars who weren't alive to witness what really happened, either according to the original setting or the setting they reassign to the composition of the Pentateuch. 

ii) Even if, for the sake of argument, we say the Pentateuch was written centuries after the fact, notice how divine inspiration doesn't register in Jenkins' explanation. He treats the narratives of Scripture as merely human documents. His outlook is secular. 

iii) Finally, even if, for the sake of argument, we treat the Pentateuch as an uninspired source, his skepticism is ironic coming from a church historian. He cites Luther as an example. Well, what about that? Does he think that due to the passage of time, we lack reliable information about the life and work of Luther?

A middle category

Pastor Dan Phillips’ second session began by repeating the statement that hit home from Session #2: “Scripture only knows 2 categories: Word of God, and not-Word-of-God. There is no middle category.” 

https://the4thdave.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/sufficient-fire-fallout-session-5-this-word-and-no-other-tell-me-how-by-dan-phillips/

i) Unfortunately for Dan, his statement isn't self-evident or self-explanatory. So many counterexamples spring to mind. Isn't regeneration from God? Weren't Adam and Eve from God? Were the plagues of Egypt from God? 

ii) Perhaps, though, in context, Dan is referring to communication. Maybe he's attempting to distinguish between God's word and man's word. If so, this seems to be his uncouth way of saying “Scripture only knows 2 categories of communication: inspired words and uninspired words. There is no middle category.”

If, however, that's what he's trying to get at, then it's blatantly false. In Scripture, divine communication includes nonverbal communication. Wordless revelatory dreams and visions. For instance, take Pharaoh's dreams (Gen 41). 

That's a middle category: inspired, nonverbal communication. 

It's funny how Christians who pride themselves on their uncompromising fidelity to Scripture can, in the very act of defending Scripture, ignore and misrepresent Scripture. Such is the blinding power of a reactionary agenda.

A child in God's nursery

I think Ed Witten is generally reckoned to be the greatest mathematical physicist of his generation. His only rival in that regard is Roger Penrose, who's about a generation older. In a recent interview, Witten said:

Horgan: Are you religious? Do you think science and religion are compatible? 

Witten: I consider scientific explanations to be more interesting and illuminating. 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/09/22/physics-titan-edward-witten-still-thinks-string-theory-on-the-right-track/?print=true

From that somewhat evasive answer I take it that he's either an atheist or an agnostic. 

Tonight I was skimming a lengthy interview he gave:

http://www.ipmu.jp/webfm_send/1053

Several things stood out:

i) I'm impressed by his personal modesty and professional generosity in crediting colleagues. 

ii) I'm impressed at how much technical information he can rattle off. He has a tremendous memory for arcane detail.

iii) He clearly senses that time is running out. He doesn't have many productive years ahead of him. Indeed, he's entering the twilight of his career. He has to make choices.

iv) Many of his papers are too scientific for mathematicians and too mathematical for scientists! 

v) Assuming that this interview is representative of the current state of physics, I'm struck by the enormous emphasis on mathematics in contrast to empirical evidence. The degree to which Witten is looking for answers in the realm of math rather than experimental evidence or scientific discoveries. 

Now perhaps that's somewhat misleading. Perhaps that reflects the particular questions he was asked, as well as the specialization of the questioners. 

But even so, it's clear that he does look to math for pointers in physics. Not just a question of mathematically formulating empirical input, but seeking guidance from pure math to chart new directions in physics. Not just looking for answers, but finding the right questions. 

One of the dangers is that math is infinite. Rather than finding its bearings, the human mind can easily lose track in the illimitable reaches of math. There is no center. 

vi) One problem may be that physics has been running low on major new discoveries to replenish its database. Astronomy and particle physics are nearing the limits of what's detectable. It's too far or too small to acquire new information. 

vii) Despite being one of the world's smartest men, physics is hard work–even for him. It's an intellectual struggle. The subject matter is much bigger than he is. He can only focus on solving particular problems. And that's an effort. It's hard to see ahead. There's much he finds nearly impervious to reason.

That's highly ironic for an atheist or agnostic. For he's like a human engineer who's trying to figure out alien technology. It's so far in advance of our technology. 

Witten is a great mind, who's groping to understand something made by a far greater mind. He's constantly made to feel his own limitations. That he's maxing out. Laboring on the margins of comprehension. He's a child in God's nursery. 

Tripping out

i) One of the pressing challenges for YEC is reconciling its interpretation of Biblical chronology with the results of conventional dating techniques. 

Mine you, there's a sense in which naturalistic evolution has the opposite problem. If YEC needs less time, naturalistic evolution needs more time. Since naturalistic evolution relies on dumb luck, it demands potentially infinite amounts of time for nature to randomly crack the safe. 

ii) However, one of the deeper issues is the nature of time itself. Can timebound creatures ever know what time is really like? We are so enmeshed in time that we can't detach ourselves to from time view time apart from our experience of time. We can't stand outside of time to assume the objectivity necessary to arrive at a truly third-person description of time. We don't know what time is like apart from what time is like for us. 

To take a comparison: the experience of time's "passage" is different when we dream. We know that because we can sometimes compare it with our waking state. And our waking state supplies the frame of reference.

But suppose we lived our entire lives in a dream world. That's the only way we'd experience time. From within the dream. There's be no external standard of comparison. 

Suppose the dreamer was a physicist or philosopher of time. He'd theorize on the nature of time. Yet his model of time would be based on how a dreamer perceives the passage of time. That would be "real time" for him. 

(Strictly speaking, we'd have nothing to dream about absent memories of the sensible world. That's what furnishes the dreamscape. To be pedantic, suppose I fell asleep at the age of twenty and never awoke. The only "world" I'd be aware of is the dream world. That's the only kind of time that I'd perceive.)

And, frankly, why assume our psychological perception of time when we are awake is truer? We are still unable to view time independent of our experience–be it dreaming or awake. We are simply made to register time in particular ways. 

iii) And this is greater a conundrum for physicalism. What we take to be the external world is a mental construct. How our brain interprets sensory input. Energy stimulating our surfaces (skin, eyes, ears, tongue, nasal passages). 

That doesn't mean the world is just a mental construct. But our perception of the world is a mental construct of the brain–given physicalism. And that may be far removed from what the world is really like.

Take someone who's high on LSD. He misperceives his surroundings. Yet, in his impaired condition, he isn't cognizant of the distortion. It seems real to him. 

In naturalistic evolution, it's not so much the brain that's high on LSD, but the evolutionary mechanisms that produce the brain in the first place. The brain is the byproduct of a brainless process. 

From a naturalistic perspective, why assume our perception of time–or anything else–is reliable? What's the difference between a blind clockmaker and a clockmaker who's dropping acid? 

Naturalism has a category for what's normal, but not for what's normative. There is no right way for things to be. 

iv) On a related note, critics of creation science are conflicted. On the one hand, they want to say creation science is falsified by mountains of empirical evidence.

On the other hand, they want to say mature creation is unfalsifiable. That's because falsifiability is a conventional criterion to demarcate science from pseudoscience. In that case, creation science isn't real science to begin with. 

v) One obstacle facing this allegation is that falsifiability is a controversial criterion. Take what one Caltech physics prof. recently said:

Modern physics stretches into realms far removed from everyday experience, and sometimes the connection to experiment becomes tenuous at best. String theory and other approaches to quantum gravity involve phenomena that are likely to manifest themselves only at energies enormously higher than anything we have access to here on Earth. The cosmological multiverse and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posit other realms that are impossible for us to access directly. Some scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable. 

The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets. 

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/01/14/what-scientific-ideas-are-ready-for-retirement/

Of course, that gets dicey. If physicists who espouse string theory or the multiverse can get away with that, why can't Christians who espouse mature creation? 

vi) Is science falsifiable? Should it be? One problem is whether we can meaningfully generalize about "science" as a whole. Some branches of science are more down-to-earth than others. 

Take medical science. Surely falsifiability is crucial in medicine. Theories should identify the true sources or causes of medical conditions. Theories should identify efficacious cures or solutions.

vii) The question suffers from ambiguity or equivocation. Parts of science can be, and should be, falsifiable. But science requires presuppositions which may be unfalsifiable. Take the existence of the external world. Or bodies with organs that perform specific functions.

That's a necessary presupposition of medical science. But it's unprovable. Consider those science fiction scenarios in which what we take to be the "real world" is a computer simulation. 

In that respect, if mature creation is unfalsifiable, so is physics. Physics presumes the existence of real space. But that's unprovable. Likewise, physics presumes the existence of time. But that circles back to the original question: what's the nature of time? 

Blaspheme or else

I'm going to comment on an article by apostate atheist Hector Avalos:

http://amestrib.com/opinion/hector-avalos-blaspheme-or-else

Like many unscrupulous academics, Avalos exploits the Hebdo massacre as a pretext to attack Christianity:

As the world knows by now, a dozen persons were massacred at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the French weekly satirical magazine, by two Islamic jihadists shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is Great”). The presumed reason is that the terrorists were angry at the blasphemous cartoons of Muhammad that Charlie Hebdo published.
Many of these commentators overlook how much of the Muslim jihadist view of blasphemy derives directly or indirectly from the Bible, the foundational text of Christianity. Yvonne Sherwood’s Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age (2012) discusses some aspects of the long reach of biblical blasphemy laws in western culture.
For example, Leviticus 24:14 states: “He who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death” (Revised Standard Version).
In other words, not only should fellow Hebrews be stoned, but also foreigners, if they blaspheme against the Hebrew god. Killing non-Muslims as well as Muslims for blaspheming bears a similar mentality. 

Notice that Avalos offer no evidence whatsoever that the Muslim jihadist view of blasphemy derives from Lev 24:14. How does quoting that text begin to demonstrate that Islam is historically or causally indebted to Lev 24:14? How many modern-day jihadist have even read that text? Muslims don't consider the OT to be authoritative. That's Jewish. Muslims are Jew-haters. 

Keep in mind that Muslims don't think Yahweh is the true God; they think Allah is the true God. So how would a text about blaspheming the name of Yahweh have any bearing on Muslim sensibilities?

Bears mauled 42 children or youths to death after insulting the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 2:23-24. Their crime was to call him “baldy.”

Several problems: 

i) Notice the equivocation, as Avalos elides "blasphemy" into insulting a prophet. 

ii) Once again, he presents no evidence that this text influenced the Muslim jihadist view of blasphemy. 

iii) How does this text have any bearing on the Hebdo massacre? That is not a divine command to punish blasphemers. Rather, that's a case of God taking it upon himself to defend the honor of his prophet. At the risk of going out on a limb, I can safely say no Christian has never taken control of a bear's mind and telepathically directed the bear to maul a blasphemer. This is direct divine punishment. It's not commanding believers to punish blasphemers. 

Although Jesus enumerates many actions as sinful, he only describes one as being unforgivable in Mark 3:29: “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

i) See an emerging pattern? Avalos offers absolutely no evidence that this text has shaped the Muslim jihadist view of blasphemy. 

ii) Moreover, this is not a command to punish blasphemers. To the contrary, it refers to eschatological punishment. God himself will punish them. 

As late as 1921, John William Gott was sentenced to prison in England for publishing pamphlets depicting Jesus entering Jerusalem as a circus clown. These people were not killed. Yet, these cases demonstrate that the freedom to blaspheme in “western” countries is not as “advanced” as some may think. 

i) He admits that Gott wasn't executed.

ii) And this was 95 years ago!

According to The Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). So, the very presence of other gods in our culture may be blasphemous for those who worship Yahweh alone.

Muslims don't worship Yahweh alone. Muslims don't worship Yahweh at all. So that has no relevance to Muslims killing infidels.    

That is why the International Humanist and Ethical Union champions the abolition of all blasphemy laws.
For most secularists/pluralists, you must blaspheme — or else your freedom of expression will inevitably be hostage to one religion or another.

i) Secularists reject freedom of expression. Secularists have secular blasphemy laws. Hate speech and speech codes. That's the real parallel to Islamic terrorists. 

ii) Moreover, many secularists rush to the defense of Muslims. They excuse Muslims. They enable Muslims.  

An untold story of lostness in America

It's sometimes easy to forget there are so many "unreached" peoples with whom we can share the gospel right in our own neck of the woods. Check out Pastor J.D. Payne's free eBook Unreached Peoples, Least Reached Places (pdf) for the details.

Conservative Roman Catholics Giving Up Hope In Their Leadership

In the light of my previous blog article (just below, on the topic of “What will come after the Bergoglio Papacy?”) – which demonstrates the types of political machinations that are going on in Rome even as we speak – I thought that this article, “In Search of Catholic Leaders”, by another conservative Roman Catholic writer, would be instructive.

The clear statement here is that “Catholic Leaders” are not currently to be found where they are supposed to be found – in the “the college or body of bishops united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, as its head”.

This author (a priest, “a Church historian and Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, DC”, and someone who, based on his job title, should have more knowledge and influence than a common parish priest) asks, “Who can save what is left of the West today? Not the pope or cardinals or bishops or priests or pastors.”

This is following the experience of “Pope St. John Paul the Great”, who, they say, almost single-handedly brought down the Communist regime.

Well, here is the proposed solution:

Rather, it is lay people, and particularly Catholic statesmen. Consider the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the role of the laity:

898 By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will. . . .It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be affected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer.

899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church: Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.

[And to “the faithful”, this priest says] … This is your job, not mine. My business is the care of souls…

The Church is interested in the application of truth based on natural law. It has little interest, as Tocqueville noted, in political parties. Pray and get involved. It’s up to you.

The problem with that, of course, is that “large chunks of Mass-going traditional Catholics don’t believe in basic doctrines of the Church”.

It truly is a case of “one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing”. Even among the conservative Roman Catholics.

Here is your “visible Church” in action. Passing the buck again.

“What will come after the Bergoglio Papacy?”

In an article entitled Killing Time with Good Pope Francis, I predicted:

With the election of “Good Pope Francis”, it seems clear that the powers that be are merely biding their time, “killing time”, until they can figure out what comes next. They clearly don’t know. A vote like this one makes one think “the Church” wants to put the papacy on hold for a few years, while the Italians try to regroup (March 14, 2013).

I didn’t quite get everything right. I said:

Fortunately, they have a warm, fuzzy “caretaker pope” who won’t do much, and who can serve to be manipulated. It is an outcome that both sides of the curial power struggle – the conservatives and the liberals – seem to have hoped for.

But that hasn’t quite played out. “Pope Francis” had other ideas. Some months later, in an interview, the accidental Bergoglio/pope said this:

The genius mystique

There's a debate about who was the greater physicist: Feynman or Gell-Mann. Here's a sample:

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/17/obituaries/richard-feynman-dead-at-69-leading-theoretical-physicist.html?pagewanted=print

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/07/the-jaguar-and-the-fox/378264/

i) Let's begin with the mystique of genius. Since atheists don't believe in God, genius is the next best thing to God. Human genius is about as close as atheism will ever get to godhood. There's a tendency, therefore, to treat a scientific genius or reputed genius (e.g. Hawking) as an oracle. 

ii) In comparing Feynman and Gell-Mann, one question is the level of the comparison. Are we asking which one was the smarter physicist or the greater physicist? 

I think some people find Feynman more intellectually impressive. Although Gell-Mann is brilliant, you can see the gears moving. HIs achievements are clearly the result of hard work. 

By contrast, what comes hard for Gell-Mann seems to come easy for Feynman. With Feynman, it's more like intellectual play. Less effortful. Less methodical.  

iii) Apropos (ii), Feynman seems to have a more versatile intelligence than Gell-Mann. Feynman comes across as a brilliant man who happened to be a physicist. That was his chosen field. But it's easy to imagine him excelling in many other fields hd he put his mind to it.

There are people who achieve great things by discovering the one thing they are great at. They'd be second-rate at anything else. They don't happen to be great at what they do. Rather, that's their niche. But Feynman had a more flexible intelligence. He's more like John von Neumann in that regard.

iv) But there are tradeoffs. There's a piecemeal quality to his achievements. The parts are greater than the whole. He didn't have the kind of sweeping, penetrating insight that enabled him to produce a broad, deep, powerful theory like Relativity. 

v) It may also be that he came on the scene a generation too late. Had had been born a generation earlier, he might have been one of the pioneers of quantum theory. 

vi) Then there's Gell-Man. His achievements lie in the realm of particle physics. But that's hard to assess, because it's hard to say whether some of those theories represent a genuine insight into the inner workings of nature. 

To a great extent, particle physicals deals with unobservables. Theoretical entities. Posits. 

Now, these have some basis in reality. If we assume that events have causes, then even if the cause is undetectable, it's rational to infer an underlying cause from detectable effects. 

The question, though, is how many layers down does it go. Beyond a certain depth, you can't say what is producing the upper layers. 

For instance, when I was a young boy my mother used to buy L'eggs stockings. These came packaged in plastic eggshells. 

I used to put marbles in the eggshells and roll them across the floor. I'd study the direction and wobble depending on how many marbles were inside, or the size of different marbles inside. The pattern would change according to the size or number of marbles inside. 

It's like "hidden variables." You can't observe the marbles, but you can detect the marbles by how they affect the trajectory. That's not a hollow shell. There must be something inside that's producing that wobble or trajectory. And it would be possible to formlate a mathematical description of the motion. 

But here's the catch: if physical reality is composed of marbles inside marbles inside marbles inside marbles, then there are too many possible constituents or possible combinations to infer the ultimate constituents or ultimate combination from what's observable or detectable. Are the "elementary particles" we think we can detect truly fundamental, or the result of something more elementary? Are these the building-blocks of reality, or are they composites of something even smaller? Is Gell-Man's Eightfold Way a genuine window into subatomic reality, or just an elegant classification scheme? 

Fischer's "helpful replies"

Is Austin Fischer the best that SEA has to offer? 

http://evangelicalarminians.org/some-helpful-replies-from-austin-fischer-to-objections-to-his-recent-post-on-calvinism-not-being-beautiful/

As to the issue of where Calvinism and any sort of classical theism are really much different, in that in both views there are creatures created who will end up in hell, I think the nub of the issue is this. In Calvinism, God WANTS people (usually the majority of humanity) to be damned forever for his glory.

It's more accurate to say he decrees their damnation for the benefit of the elect. 

In classical theism, God does not want anybody to be damned forever…

What does Fischer have in mind when he refers to "classical theism"? Is Augustinian theism an example of classical theism. If so, does the God of Augustinian theism not want anybody to be damned? 

Is Thomism an example of classical theism? If so, does the God of Thomism not want anybody to be damned?

…and then puts his money where his mouth is by dying on a wooden stake.

Doesn't the Calvinist God put his money where his mouth is by dying on a wooden stake? Calvinism affirms the crucifixion of God Incarnate. So what is Fischer even talking about? 

Reasonable minds can differ here, but I think there’s all the difference in the world between a God who wants most humans to be damned forever (and renders it certain via compatibilism) and a God who doesn’t but cannot avoid the possibility of damnation given the contingencies of a world with meaningful created freedom.

That's confused in several respects:

i) Even if libertarian freedom is true, what's the basis for assuming there are no possible (or feasible) worlds in which everyone freely loves God?

ii) And even if freewill theism excludes universalism, to say that God can't save everyone doesn't entail that God must damn anyone. Does Fischer think God is forced to create humans whom he knows that he will damn? Why can't the God of freewill theism prevent their damnation by preventing the damned from existing in the first place? Did they put a gun to his head?

In other words, in Calvinism people are damned because God wants to flex his wrath muscle (for the good of the elect). In classical theism, people are damned because God wants a world where love, meaning, and relationship [sic] are possible. 

Of course, that begs the question. 

As to foreknowledge, the key (as I point out in the response to Kevin) is that God’s foreknowledge is not determinative. There is some mystery here, but nothing logically incoherent.

Foreknowledge isn't "determinative" in the causal sense, but it renders the outcome certain. 

The ethics of mature creation

The problem with the mature creation view is that the phenomena that indicate "coherent age" contains information about the past which would not be otherwise present if the past was unreal. Take the example of distant starlight. Holding the mature creation view would indicate that the light from any stellar body beyond about 10,000 light-years away consist of photons created in transit. Therefore, such light is not truly indicative of what is happening in the stellar bodies. But when the light portrays for example a supernova, taking the mature creation view must say that the supernova did not actually happen since the light containing the information about the supernova was created in transit. How is this not deceptive, to indicate an astronomical event which did not actually happen? 

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-problems-with-mature-creation-view.html

i) I think Daniel does a nice job of framing the issue. I find his objection somewhat ironic, for even though I'm more sympathetic to OEC than he is, I am, at the same time, more sympathetic to mature creation than he is. Indeed, I think that mature creation is true to some degree. It's just a question of how much. And once you allow for mature creation, it's not easy to identify a cut-off point that isn't arbitrary.

ii) The charge of deception is the classic charge against mature creation. However, I rarely if ever find any critic discuss the nature of deception. What are the necessary conditions of deception? 

a) Normally, deception is defined as making a false statement with the intention to deceive. However, even a true statement can be deceptive. Take a lawyer who asks a "simple question" to elicit a "simple answer." Giving a true answer will be misleading because it lacks sufficient context. 

Moreover, it's possible for the speaker to make a true statement that he mistakenly believes to be false. 

b) Is a false expectation is a necessary condition? Someone can only be deceived if he expected the truth to be different. 

c) However, the issue of false expectation raises another issue: who bears the onus? is it speaker's duty not to foil the listener's expectation, or listener's duty not to have that expectation in the first place? 

It's hard to state a universal principle. If a listener has a reasonable expectation, then perhaps there's a the prima facie onus on the speaker not to foil the listener's expectation. 

Yet that's overdrawn. Even reasonable expectations can be wrong. We're fallible. So it would be extreme to say it's unethical to ever contradict a reasonable expectation.

If, however, the listener has an unreasonable expectation, then it's his fault, and not the speaker's, if the speaker foils his expectation. 

d) Put another way, the truth can be deceptive if the listener has a false expectation. But if his expectation was unreasonable, then he only has himself to blame. 

Did the speaker deceive you? Or did you deceive yourself by entertaining a false expectation? 

So one consideration when considering the ethics of deception is a justified or unjustified expectation. Was the speaker a deceiver, or was the listener self-deceived? 

iv) Take parents who adopt a newborn. They don't tell him that he's adopted. And they don't tell him he's not adopted, either. They just don't say.

They don't tell him when he's a child because they fear that would foster a sense of insecurity and rejection. They don't tell him when he's an adolescent because that's an emotionally unstable period of life. There never seems to be the right time to tell him. 

So he grows up believing these were his biological parents. Is that deceptive? If so, is that unethical? 

v) Does everyone have the same expectations about anything? Is there such a thing as a uniform human expectation? If not, then isn't deception or self-deception inevitable? Isn't a communicator bound to deceive some people some of the time?

Unless everybody has the same expectations, it doesn't seem possible to avoid deceiving some people. There's no intention to deceive. Rather, deception is the ineluctable side-effect of native listeners. 

a) For instance, there are literal-minded people who never get satire. They always read it straight. Did the satirist deceive them? Is satire unethical because some people take it seriously?

b) Likewise, there are naive people who are easily surprised by things that don't surprise cynical people. Is it the speaker's duty to avoid confusing naive people? Or is it the listener's duty not to be so naive? 

c) What about optical illusions? In a sense, they're only illusory if you don't recognize that they are optical illusions. But does every observer have that level of sophistication? Aren't some observers fooled by optical illusions?

Or take an audiovisual illusion–like seeing lightning before you hear thunder. We understand that because we know that lightwaves travel faster than soundwaves. Even though it's the same event, it seems to be separated in time. The effect is observer-relative. Depends on whether you witness the storm overhead or at a distance. But a prescientific observer doesn't have that interpretive framework. 

Scientific theories like Relativity and quantum mechanics have counterintuitive implications for time and space. They contradict common sense expectations. Take the twin paradox, Schrödinger's cat, or quantum nonlocality. Would it be unethical for God to make a world like that?

vi) At the risk of belaboring my stock illustration, a period movie set "contains information" about past nonevents. These include period stage props. Antique replicas. 

Even if the movie is based on a true story, there will be fictional details to fill in the gaps. Perhaps the director builds a set of Dodge City, based on historical photographs. But all he has are pictures of the facade. Even though the interior may be an accurate reconstruction of 19C saloons, that's not what the Long Branch Saloon really looked like inside. If you went back in time, that's not what you'd see. 

Likewise, here will be extras playing bit characters who never existed. Moreover, Dodge City never existed at the location of the movie set. And the 19C town doesn't exist in the here and now. 

vii) Now, Daniel might raise the obvious objection that when we watch a movie set in the Old West, we know this isn't really the past. Rather, it's an artistic recreation of the past. So it's not deceptive. Not dishonest. 

But that depends on the viewer. Does a young child who watches a Western know that? 

Gregg Allison on Roman Catholicism: “An Evangelical Perspective”

I have spent three blog posts now anticipating the objections to Gregg Allison’s definition of “what is evangelical”. These include:

The big Roman Catholic apologetic thumb on the scales.

On Gregg Allison’s “Roman Catholicism: An Evangelical Assessment”: Responding to Objections on “Exactly What is Evangelicalism?”

These Nonsensical Objections from Bryan Cross are Not to be Trusted.

I don’t want to say too much more about these objections, except that Allison’s description of himself as writing as “an evangelical systematic theologian of the Reformed Baptist variety” and his description of “evangelicalism” as:

not a church or a denomination but a massive broad-tent movement that encompasses thousands of churches and ministries from many different theological persuasions: Reformed, Lutheran, and Arminian; covenantal and dispensational; Pentecostal/ charismatic and non-Pentecostal/ non-charismatic; proponents of infant baptism and supporters of believer’s baptism; complementarians and egalitarians; and much more. Given this amazing theological spectrum, it is not possible to define and present one evangelical theology; evangelical theologies—plural—are the reality.

… does not strike me as dishonest in any way about “where he’s coming from”. He includes himself within this grouping, and he describes his position as “a typical expression of evangelical theology” which he calls “an evangelical vision of life with God and human flourishing”. To which he attributes the following summary characteristics: