BY STEVE HAYS
Associated Press
The discovery that man shares half his DNA with bananas has triggered a paradigm shift in religion, paleoanthropology, and bioethics.
Richard Dawkins has already penned several bestsellers on the subject, including The Selfish Banana, The Blind Banana, and Climbing A Banana Split.
In an interview I recently conducted with him, he said, “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in the bananan origin of man, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane or wicked—but I'd rather not consider that.”
Jumping on the bandwagon, Daniel Dennett rushed to press with Darwin’s Dangerous Banana.
Edward O. Wilson published a book entitled Sociobananthropology in which he derives a secular blueprint for human ethics from the social life of bananas.
For his part, Stephen Jay Gould published a book highly critical of Wilson’s thesis, entitled The Mismeasure of Banana-Man. He proposed punctuated paleobananthropology as a scientific alternative to sociobananthropology.
His colleague, Richard Lewontin, has made this an issue of scientific method. In an exclusive interview for this reporter, he said, “We take the side of methodological bananaturalism in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
By contrast, Francis Collins took issue with Lewontin’s naturalistic bananthropology. Describing his own position as theistic bananthropology, Collins explained to me that man evolved from a banana at the point in time when God miraculously endowed the banana with a rational soul.
Dr. Collins deplored “woodenly literalistic” interpretations of Genesis. He expressed his concern that Appalachian fundies, by their backward denial of bananthropology, would drive many young students away from the Christian faith.
Other lines of dissent have begun to emerge. John Maynard Smith has argued that man is actually descended from a cucumber while Ernst Mayr has argued, to the contrary, that the zucchini is the true ancestor of modern man. In turn, Francis Crick recently proposed the theory of directed panbananaspermia.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query banana. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query banana. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Banadam and Eve
L'Osservatore Romano
22 February 2012
Today, at a news conference, Pope Benedict XVI issued The Chiquita Declaration. The Chiquita Declaration was drafted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Archbishop Rowman Williams immediately hailed The Chiquita Declaration as a “milestone in the rapprochement between science and theology.”
Ever since comparative genomics revealed the fact that man shares over half his DNA with bananas, there has been increasing pressure to reexamine and revise the traditional dogma of historic Adam.
Peter Enns recently published The Evolution of Banadam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins, while Tremper Longman published Science, Bananas and the Bible: Reconciling Rival Theories of Origins.
As both scholars document, “Israel” is a corporate Banadam, while Gen 2 is just the backstory to Israel. Israel is Banadam.
As Francis Collins explained in a recent interview, “Science has traced our common ancestry back to Mitochondrial Eve and chromosomal Banadam. At some point in human evolution a banana mated with a hominid.”
He admitted that scientists hadn’t achieved consensus on the identity of the hominid.
“The two leading candidates are Australopithecus and Homo erectus,” he said.
In a recent interview with Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury tried to reassure troubled Christians that this scientific and theological development was not a threat to the Christian faith.
“As long as God infused the banana with a human soul before the banana mated with Australopithecus or Homo erectus, the physical derivation of Banadam’s body is of no theological consequence,” he explained.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Descent of Man
In the past, unscrupulous fundies have exploited the gaps in the fossil record to attack macroevolution.
But thanks to the cutting edge science of comparative genetics, the theory of common descent has been put on an unshakable foundation.
Genetic evidence now supplies unmistakable evidence that the first hominid was a banana:
"Robert May is a UK Chief Scientist. In New Scientist magazine (July 1, 2000)on page 5 he stated, 'We share half our genes with the banana'."
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2005-01/1106711681
The point at which early man forked off from the other primates is known in the paleoanthropological literature as the Banana Split, which took place sometime between the Pliocene and Maraschino epochs.
But thanks to the cutting edge science of comparative genetics, the theory of common descent has been put on an unshakable foundation.
Genetic evidence now supplies unmistakable evidence that the first hominid was a banana:
"Robert May is a UK Chief Scientist. In New Scientist magazine (July 1, 2000)on page 5 he stated, 'We share half our genes with the banana'."
http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/GENEALOGY-DNA/2005-01/1106711681
The point at which early man forked off from the other primates is known in the paleoanthropological literature as the Banana Split, which took place sometime between the Pliocene and Maraschino epochs.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
A corrupt banana
Perry Robinson continues to make heavy weather over Evan’s use of the word “nature.” As I said before, this is a linguistic convention, nothing more.
For example, the Westminster Confession speaks of a “corrupted nature” which is conveyed to all of Adam’s posterity. “This corruption of nature,” it goes on to say, “doth remain in those that are regenerated.”
What it means by this is that the unregenerate are “defiled” in all “faculties” of the “soul,” rendering the agent “utterly indisposed” to all good.
If, however, Perry is of the opinion that “nature” carries too much ontological freight, then we are happy to substitute a more neutral-gray term. Suppose we revise the Confession as follows:
“They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same dead in sin, and corrupted banana, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.”
“This corruption of banana, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated.”
For example, the Westminster Confession speaks of a “corrupted nature” which is conveyed to all of Adam’s posterity. “This corruption of nature,” it goes on to say, “doth remain in those that are regenerated.”
What it means by this is that the unregenerate are “defiled” in all “faculties” of the “soul,” rendering the agent “utterly indisposed” to all good.
If, however, Perry is of the opinion that “nature” carries too much ontological freight, then we are happy to substitute a more neutral-gray term. Suppose we revise the Confession as follows:
“They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same dead in sin, and corrupted banana, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.”
“This corruption of banana, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated.”
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Twinkies
I'm going to comment on this post:
What is yellow on the outside but white on the inside? If you guessed a "banana," though the inside appears more cream than white, you would be close. The answer is, a twinkie. Have you eaten one? They are fairly inexpensive and only about 135 calories. If you eat too many you might get a stomachache. There is definitely not enough sugar in these bite-size snacks to give you a significant energy boost like Red Bull or Starbucks coffee. Nevertheless, they are fairly tasty. Eat them. Yes! Use that term to describe people. No!
In response to my brief blog post titled, "Listen Up White America," a dear friend responded to me by email. He described some of his experiences as a Korean Presbyterian pastor. He said that the black experience in Reformed and Presbyterian "churches are very similar to what I have experienced. The most interesting part of it is that those racial experiences didn't happen to me until I arrived at [said seminary] and entered the larger (i.e., outside of the Reformed Korean-American community) Reformed circles. [M]any people at [said seminary] assumed I didn't speak English. It was ridiculous."
He went on to say that he believes Asians, though he can intimately speak as a Korean, are seen either as twinkies (i.e., yellow on the outside, white on the inside) or non-English speaking asians," what he called, "F.O.B.," which means "fresh off the boat." He said, "Most would initially identify us as the latter. It's sad, but it's the truth…But I see changes... [Asians are] slowly shedding the image of kung-fu kicking Bruce Lee out of people's heads..."
Let's begin with some definitions. According to the Urban Dictionary:
OreoA racist slur and schoolyard name based on racist stereotypes wrongly assuming that intelligence, articulateness, dapperness, and manners are traits of whites and not blacks. Therefore, a black who possesses these traits is an oreo, white on the inside and black on the outside. A corollary slur is banana, yellow (Asian) on the outside and white on the inside.
twinkieAn asian person who is either adopted or living in a white community. Hence, yellow on the outside and white on the inside.
twinkyAn asian who acts like a white person, hangs out with white people, dresses like a white person, etc. Basicly, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Used as an insult.
oreoA insulting termed often used by blacks to derogate other blacks as "Black on the outside, white on the inside." White on the inside meaning anything from speaking proper english, getting good grades, liking music that isn't hip hop, rap or R&B and having a diverse group of friends.
oreoTerm for African Americans that the black community is generally offended with for betraying their roots usually for dating caucasion girls, dressing too white, talking too white, etc. The term is branded OREO since they are "Black on the outside, White on the inside"
oreoA Black African American person who, because he/she has the desire to make a success of their life, has gained the wrath of foolish Black African Americans who have decided to make a shambles of their own. Often OREO's are educated, intelligent, and the respect of the business community. Thus, in the eyes of the dominant Black African American community, they are "guilty" of being "White" on the inside.
oreoA stereotype created by blacks to be used for other blacks who are "black on the outside, white on the inside". Black being their skin color, and white meaning to display characteristics of a "white" person, therefore "betraying their black roots".
These characteristics being (but not limited to), raised in an environment that's NOT the projects, speaking proper english/very limited use of slang, having an eclectic taste in music, having a diverse group of friends, being well-educated, being legitimately employed, not abusing the welfare system, being well-mannered and civilized, saves money for college instead of bling and cheap grills, and wearing nice clothes that are not Roca Wear, Sean Jean, Baby Phat and so on.
Most blacks confuse the "oreo" stereotype to being "bourgie", which is a very rude, stuck-up black, who thinks they are more "high-class" than they really are.
This stereotype is stupid, and apparently stems from the fear most nigg3rs have of success. Blacks believe that unless you are a talentless rapper, a professional athlete, or "gangsta", it is impossible to be successful without being an "oreo".
Note is that "twinkle," "banana," and "oreo" are intraracial epithets. This isn't, in the first place, how whites characterize certain blacks or Asians. Rather, this is in-group slang. How some members of a racial or ethnic group view fellow members of the same racial or ethnic group.
For some reason, Leon and his Korean friend turn the tables. They project this attitude onto whites. They imagine that when whites view black or Asian professionals, whites seem them as "twinkles" or "oreos."
I'm curious as to why Leon and his friend make this assumption about what whites are thinking. Is this based on anecdotal conversations? Sociological polling data?
ii) Why assume that whites in general even indulge in these comparisons? Why assume that if a white sees a black or Asian professional, his automatic reaction is to mentally compare that individual to whites? Why assume that whites in general are that racially self-conscious? Why assume whites in general spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to be white–in contrast to other ethnicities?
iii) I'm curious as to what Leon and his Korean friend think it means to be "white on the inside" or act white. If Yo-Yo Ma plays Classical music, does that make him white on the inside? If so, from whose perspective? Do Asians think Yo-Yo Ma is a "twinkie"? If so, isn't that a problem within the Asian community?
iv) Classical music originates in England and Europe. So Yo-Yo Ma usually performs white composers.
What about jazz? Is jazz a black art form? Many jazz musicians are Jewish. Are they Jewish on the outside, but black on the inside?
v) What about something more abstract? Many great mathematicians are Caucasian. Does that make math a white thing? If a Chinese or Japanese mathematician is a math prof. at Harvard, Princeton, or MIT, is he acting white?
For that matter, many great mathematicians are Jewish. Does that mean an Asian math prof. is acting Jewish?
What about Srinivasa Ramanujan. From what I've read, he's typically considered to be the greatest natural mathematician. The most naturally gifted mathematician who ever lived. How would Leon classify him? Is he East Indian out the outside, but something else on the inside? Or is mathematical aptitude race-neutral in Leon's classification scheme?
vi) BTW, isn't Leon overgeneralizing about Asian pigmentation? What about South Asians?
vii) To the extent that whites associate Asians with kung-fu, isn't that a case of racial self-stereotyping? Don't Asian actors and directors promote that image?
Moreover, that's not a negative image, is it? Isn't martial arts widely admired in segments of the white community?
I've only read three things by Leon, but thus far it's almost the mirror image of how David Duke might divide up the world. All these racial boxes. Which box is the right box for you?
In the coming months I hope to write a 6-part series on some of the issues surrounding ethnicity in (broadly speaking) Reformed and Presbyterian circles. On the one hand, I am fully aware that many people do not believe there are any problems. I normally receive this response from those in the majority. Though I overstate my case for the purposes of this illustration, to say there are no problems is like the slave owner telling the slave, "Everything is okay." The slave owner is not aware, or perhaps suppresses, the myriad of issues surrounding the establishment because he is the superior; he is the majority. From the slave's perspective, however, issues abound. I do not categorize whites in Reformed and Presbyterian Churches today as slave owners nor do I classify African-Americans (or non-whites) in the aforementioned circles as slaves. However, based on personal study, numerous conversations, and personal experience, I think it is clear that we look through a different lens much like the slave and slave owner.
Well, if he insists on framing the issue that way, it would be easy to recast it. Obama is Baby Doc Duvalier. Eric Holder, Susan Rice, Todd Jones, Valerie Jarrett, and Ayo Kimathi are the Tonton Macoutes.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Did God command genocide?
@RandalRauserGenocide is the act of attempting to destroy a specific racial, cultural, and/religious identity.8:36 AM - 12 Jul 2019Aaron TaylorSo would ordering all the Amalekites to be killed be classified as a call for genocide?@RandalRauserYes. That's an instance of genocide by legal definition, as is the destruction of the tribes in Deuteronomy 20.10:14 AM - 12 Jul 2019
i) Of course, somebody can always define a word a certain way, then say something in Scripture falls under that definition. That, however, says nothing about Scripture but how the word was defined. You could redefine "banana" to mean "God," then say that Christians worship a banana.
ii) It's not as if we're required to submit to someone's tendentious or stipulative definition of "genocide". I didn't vote on that. I reserve the right to disregard tendentious definitions. You're not entitled to make me accept your definitions.
iii) The definition is equivocal because the same word is used to denote three different concepts. It would be clearer to use a different word for each concept.
iv) It becomes a loaded question. As defined, God commanded genocide in one respect but not another. Yet the word itself doesn't draw those distinctions–it's the same word for all three concepts. It is therefore inaccurate, even if you accept that definition, to say God commanded genocide–inasmuch as the definition is only partially true in regard to Scripture. The definition bundles together three different concepts. But it would be inaccurate to affirm the semantic bundle in regard to Scripture.
v) In addition, it means the odious connotations of one concept tar a different concept by association. Even assuming that it's intrinsically wrong to destroy a specific racial identity, there are situations where attempting to destroy a specific cultural or religious identity is praiseworthy. Take religions or cultures that practice human sacrifice, child sacrifice, torturing war captives, burning widows, honor killings, gang rape, sodomy, pederasty, female genital mutilation, &c. It isn't wrong to destroy those cultural and/or religious markers. To the contrary, their destruction makes the world a better place.
vi) Notice that the definition doesn't say "violently" or "forcibly" destroy. But that would mean an intellectual critique of a specific cultural or religious identity is genocidal. That the attempt to discredit ideas through rational analysis is "genocide", even though there's nothing coercive about that exercise.
vii) Suppose (voluntary) interracial mating became the norm. That would destroy specific racial identities. That might not be the intent, but it would have that side-effect. Does that mean interracial mating is genocidal?
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Obama's banana republic
Obama’s trying his best to turn America into Amerika.
There is, for instance, the lawlessness of the Obama administration. Many examples spring to mind. Eric Holder refusing to equitably enforce the law against voter intimidation. Indeed, to use the law to squelch Constitutional free speech:
To take another example, Congress refuses to pass the Dream Act, so ICE is does an end-run around Congress.
In the same vein, ICE flouts Arizona law:
Likewise, Congress rejects cap and trade, so EPA does an end-run around Congress:
And now the Obama campaign has an Attack Watch website where Obamatons can narc on their fellow citizens for expressing dissent. What’s next? Minders? Secret police?
The upcoming election isn't between Republicans and Democrats, but between Republicans and banana republicans.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Wafer Wars
Opening hostilities in the Wafer Wars commenced when a renegade monk by the name of Sensibilius published a commentary on the Gospel of John in which he suggested that the words, “I am the true bread,” should be interpreted figuratively rather than literally.
His book was immediately placed on the index, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was promptly burnt at the stake.
That seemed to put an end to the matter, but his contraband commentary became the subject of learned disputations, and this—in turn—merely raised more meddlesome questions.
If the Son was a loaf of bread, then who was the Baker, and when did he come out of the oven?
After much agitation, the Council of Holy Dough solemnly decreed the dogma of the eternal fermentation of the Son.
However, the Western Church took it upon herself to amend the decree. The amended text of the Council now decreed the double fermentation of the Son.
This led to a schism between the One True Church of the West and the other One True Church of the East.
In the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople soon has his own crisis to deal with. For centuries, Eastern liturgy specified that the sacred baker add the salt after the flour, but before the water.
This was in accordance with The Booke of Julia Chylde, in the Slavonic version. Unless the ingredients were added in the prescribed order, the sacrament was invalid.
However, the Slavonic version was a translation of the long lost Nubian version. A monk at St. Catherine’s recently discovered the misfiled copy of the Nubian version.
Upon inspection, church authorities found, to their chagrin, that in the Nubian version the baker was to add the salt before the flour, but after the water.
Church authorities tried to suppress the discrepancy, but word got out. Soon the One True Church of the East was rent between the pre-Saltine faction and the post-Saltine faction, depending on which recipe was deemed to be the canonical recipe.
One pre-Saltine baker was charged with sacrilege for surreptitiously adding the ingredients in the wrong order. As punishment, he, his wife, and their eleven children were stuffed into a giant puff pastry and heated in his own oven.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Nubian version also contained a variant reading of Ps 103:12. For centuries, the Church had used this verse as a prooftext for unleavened communion bread. In the Slavonic version, it read, “as far as the yeast is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
Now, however, they found out that the original reading was “east” instead of “yeast.”
This was a matter of extreme delicacy, for it meant that generations of devout communicants had been receiving mere bread. When word leaked out of this revelation, lay believers began to practice proxy communion on behalf of the dead—in hopes of redeeming their loved ones from the lake of fire.
Meanwhile, the other One True Church of the West was fighting the Wafer Wars on another front.
Charles the Short, lord of the Holy Roman Empire, needed to form a military alliance with the king of Saxony to defend his border along the Palatinate. And to do that, he needed to arrange a marriage between his only daughter, Princess Crumbcake, and Duke das Brot, nephew to the king of Saxony.
But the nephew to the king of Saxony was already married, so he needed to annul his marriage.
However, Pope Obnoxius III needed to form a military alliance with the Palatine king to defend the eastern flank of the papal estates. And he couldn’t grant an annulment to the king of Saxony without offending the Palatine monarch.
On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to offend the king of Saxony since he needed his troops to defend the western flank of the papal estates.
To further complicate matters, Princess Crumbcake was a secret disciple of the Cinnamonians. This was a sect that ardently believed the wafer should be made of cinnamon bread.
After all, if the Savior was literally bread, then what sort of bread was he? Princess Crumbcake’s theological judgment was admittedly swayed by the fact that she had a sweet tooth.
By contrast, the Duke was of the firm conviction that banana bread was the only true communion bread. After all, the true bread came “from above,” which is true of banana trees, but hardly true of wheat fields.
Pope Obnoxius III convoked the Second Council of Holy Dough to hammer out a compromise. By handing out a preferment here and a preferment there, Pope Obnoxius was able to secure the votes necessary to pass an infallible decree.
But his compromise provoked a peasant revolt. For generations the peasantry had been led to believe their liturgy was the true liturgy. To go to Mass one day and suddenly hear new words and see new rites left them deeply shaken. They boycotted the new Mass. They threatened to do violence to the village priest unless he recited the old Mass. Civil war was close at hand.
Pope Obnoxius laid the countryside under edict. For a while, there was a thriving black market in old communion wafers, consecrated under the old rites. At its peak, a wafer might go for as much as a milk cow and two guinea hens.
Families huddled behind barricaded doors during the witching hour, for fear the bowels of perdition would open wide and swallow them whole now that they had no digested wafer to ward off evil spirits.
But as time went on, people began to notice...well...they began to notice that time went on. Things that go bump in the night were no bumpier than normal. Death by ritual Satanic murder remained well within the actuarial mean.
It slowly dawned on people that maybe Sensibilius was right all along.
His book was immediately placed on the index, a bench warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was promptly burnt at the stake.
That seemed to put an end to the matter, but his contraband commentary became the subject of learned disputations, and this—in turn—merely raised more meddlesome questions.
If the Son was a loaf of bread, then who was the Baker, and when did he come out of the oven?
After much agitation, the Council of Holy Dough solemnly decreed the dogma of the eternal fermentation of the Son.
However, the Western Church took it upon herself to amend the decree. The amended text of the Council now decreed the double fermentation of the Son.
This led to a schism between the One True Church of the West and the other One True Church of the East.
In the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople soon has his own crisis to deal with. For centuries, Eastern liturgy specified that the sacred baker add the salt after the flour, but before the water.
This was in accordance with The Booke of Julia Chylde, in the Slavonic version. Unless the ingredients were added in the prescribed order, the sacrament was invalid.
However, the Slavonic version was a translation of the long lost Nubian version. A monk at St. Catherine’s recently discovered the misfiled copy of the Nubian version.
Upon inspection, church authorities found, to their chagrin, that in the Nubian version the baker was to add the salt before the flour, but after the water.
Church authorities tried to suppress the discrepancy, but word got out. Soon the One True Church of the East was rent between the pre-Saltine faction and the post-Saltine faction, depending on which recipe was deemed to be the canonical recipe.
One pre-Saltine baker was charged with sacrilege for surreptitiously adding the ingredients in the wrong order. As punishment, he, his wife, and their eleven children were stuffed into a giant puff pastry and heated in his own oven.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the Nubian version also contained a variant reading of Ps 103:12. For centuries, the Church had used this verse as a prooftext for unleavened communion bread. In the Slavonic version, it read, “as far as the yeast is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”
Now, however, they found out that the original reading was “east” instead of “yeast.”
This was a matter of extreme delicacy, for it meant that generations of devout communicants had been receiving mere bread. When word leaked out of this revelation, lay believers began to practice proxy communion on behalf of the dead—in hopes of redeeming their loved ones from the lake of fire.
Meanwhile, the other One True Church of the West was fighting the Wafer Wars on another front.
Charles the Short, lord of the Holy Roman Empire, needed to form a military alliance with the king of Saxony to defend his border along the Palatinate. And to do that, he needed to arrange a marriage between his only daughter, Princess Crumbcake, and Duke das Brot, nephew to the king of Saxony.
But the nephew to the king of Saxony was already married, so he needed to annul his marriage.
However, Pope Obnoxius III needed to form a military alliance with the Palatine king to defend the eastern flank of the papal estates. And he couldn’t grant an annulment to the king of Saxony without offending the Palatine monarch.
On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to offend the king of Saxony since he needed his troops to defend the western flank of the papal estates.
To further complicate matters, Princess Crumbcake was a secret disciple of the Cinnamonians. This was a sect that ardently believed the wafer should be made of cinnamon bread.
After all, if the Savior was literally bread, then what sort of bread was he? Princess Crumbcake’s theological judgment was admittedly swayed by the fact that she had a sweet tooth.
By contrast, the Duke was of the firm conviction that banana bread was the only true communion bread. After all, the true bread came “from above,” which is true of banana trees, but hardly true of wheat fields.
Pope Obnoxius III convoked the Second Council of Holy Dough to hammer out a compromise. By handing out a preferment here and a preferment there, Pope Obnoxius was able to secure the votes necessary to pass an infallible decree.
But his compromise provoked a peasant revolt. For generations the peasantry had been led to believe their liturgy was the true liturgy. To go to Mass one day and suddenly hear new words and see new rites left them deeply shaken. They boycotted the new Mass. They threatened to do violence to the village priest unless he recited the old Mass. Civil war was close at hand.
Pope Obnoxius laid the countryside under edict. For a while, there was a thriving black market in old communion wafers, consecrated under the old rites. At its peak, a wafer might go for as much as a milk cow and two guinea hens.
Families huddled behind barricaded doors during the witching hour, for fear the bowels of perdition would open wide and swallow them whole now that they had no digested wafer to ward off evil spirits.
But as time went on, people began to notice...well...they began to notice that time went on. Things that go bump in the night were no bumpier than normal. Death by ritual Satanic murder remained well within the actuarial mean.
It slowly dawned on people that maybe Sensibilius was right all along.
Friday, March 10, 2006
From panda's thumb to Tweedledum
An Interview with David Berlinski: Part One
Jonathan Witt
Center for Science and Culture communications director Rob Crowther suggested I post to IDtheFuture a recent interview with expatriate philosopher, mathematician, science writer, novelist and Darwin scourge David Berlinski. The interviewer is a Jewish agnostic living in Paris.
… Why do you think the debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution has taken on such a nasty turn …
DB: Nasty, eh? If so, the nastiness is not entirely ecumenical. As far as I can tell, only one side is now occupying the gutter, even though the gutter is, as gutters generally are, more than spacious enough for two. But you raise a good question. Why are Darwinian biologists so outraged? Like the San Andreas fault, the indignation conspicuous at blogs such as The Panda’s Thumb or Talk Reason is now visible from outer space.
There is a lot at stake, obviously. Money, prestige, power, influence – they all play a role. Darwinism is an ideological system and when such systems come under threat, their supporters react in predictable ways. Freedom of thought very often appears as an inconvenience to those with a position to protect. Look at the attempts made to humiliate Rick Sternberg at the Smithsonian Institute, or the campaign now underway to do the same thing to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State. There is nothing surprising in all this. I myself believe that the world would be suitably improved if those with whom I disagreed were simply to shut up. What is curious is how quickly the Darwinian establishment has begun to appear vulnerable ….
… Not to scientists …
DB: No, perhaps not. But to everyone else. Consider the latest Pew poll. “Two-thirds of Americans,” the New York Times reported, “say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.” But even among those quite persuaded of Darwin’s theory, “18 percent said that evolution was ‘guided by a supreme being.’” Now these are astonishing figures. They represent an authentic popular revolt against elite thought. I cannot remember anything like it. The fact that so many Darwinian biologists are utterly tone-deaf when it comes to debate has hardly helped their case. It is no small thing to have appeared before the American public in a way that suggests both illimitable arrogance and scientific insecurity.
… With all due respect, Mr. Berlinski, there are times reading what you have written when it seems that you are right down there in the gutter with the best of them. You did, after all, refer to Richard Dawkins as – and I quote – “a remarkably reptilian character” ….
DB: Did I? Well, mine has been an exercise in defensive slumming.
… I see. What really accounts for your hostility to figures such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins? …
DB: In the case of Daniel Dennett, I think contempt might be a better word than hostility, and indifference a better word still. There are, of course, lots more where he came from – P.Z. Myers, for example, or Eugenie Scott, or Jason Rosenhouse. Throw in Steven Weinberg, just to reach an even number ….
… The Nobel Laureate? …
DB: None other.
… But Dawkins …
DB: An interesting case, very louche – fascinating and repellant. Fascinating because like Noam Chomsky he has the strange power effortlessly to command attention. Just possibly both men are descended from a line of simian carnival barkers, great apes who adventitiously found employment at a circus. I really should look at this more closely. Repellent because Dawkins is that depressingly familiar figure – the intellectual fanatic. What is it that he has said? “It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)”. Substitute ‘Allah’ for ‘evolution,’ and these words might have been uttered by some fanatical Mullah just itching to get busy with a little head-chopping. If he ever gets tired of Oxford, Dawkins could probably find a home at Finsbury Park.
… You do not, I gather, think much of the kind of atheism Dawkins is concerned to promote …
DB: It’s pretty much the sort of stuff Bertrand Russell used to put out when he needed to knock-off a popular best-seller or dazzle one of his mistresses. You see, my dear, belief in god is no better than belief in a teacup orbiting Mars, whereupon my dear would generally begin loosening her undergarments. The fact is that these kinds of arguments have been known to embarrass a wart hog. This has been tested at zoos, by the way, and the experiments widely reported.
… But why should we take seriously religious beliefs that are lacking in evidence?
DB: We shouldn’t. But asking someone like Richard Dawkins about the evidence for God’s existence is a little like asking a quadruple amputee to run the marathon.
The interesting point is elsewhere. There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time ….
… Come again …
DB: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects.
… And this is something that you, a secular Jew, believe? …
DB: What a question! I feel like I’m being interviewed by the Dean at some horrible community college. Do you believe in the university’s mission – that sort of thing. Look, I have no religious convictions and no religious beliefs. What I do believe is that theology is no more an impossible achievement than mathematics. The same rational standards apply. Does the system make sense; does it explain something? Are there deep principles at work. Is it productive?
… You know, Dawkins, at least, is quite clear that insofar as religion is expressed as a sense of wonder, he counts himself a religious man ....
DB: … Sure. But that’s because he has found it remarkably convenient to associate his views with those of Albert Einstein – you know, the standard starry sky at night, my goodness the universe is wonderful routine. Why should Dawkins, of all people, find the universe wonderful if he also believes it is largely a self-sustaining material object, something bigger than a head of cabbage but not appreciably different in kind? The whole place supposedly has no meaning, no point, no purpose, and no reason for its existence beyond itself. Sounds horrible to me. Wonder is the last reaction I’d expect. It’s like being thrilled by Newark, New Jersey. A universe that is nothing more than a collection of atoms whizzing around in the void is a material slum …
…How would you react to the argument that Dawkins has made that any form of religion that goes beyond the scientific facts about the universe really represents a form of brainwashing …
DB: He’s probably right. Most education is a form of brainwashing – so much better in French, by the way, lavage de cerveau. Give a child to the Jesuits, they say, and ten years later the man will cringe when he spots the Cross. But look, ten years or so spent studying physics is a pretty effective form of brainwashing as well. You emerge into the daylight blinking weakly and talking about an endless number of universes stacked on top of one another like an old-fashioned Maine pancake breakfast. Or you start babbling inanely about how meaningless the universe is. But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time. There is nothing these people won’t believe. No wonder used-car salesmen love them. Biologists are, of course, worse. Tell them that in the future Richard Dawkins is going to conduct a personal invasion of Hell in order to roust the creationists, and The Panda’s Thumb will at once start vibrating with ticket sales.
… Perhaps this isn’t the most productive of topics to pursue …
DB: That’s fine. You lead, I’ll follow …
…Can you say a little bit more by what you mean by an ideological system?...
DB: Marxism is an ideological system, or was, and Darwinism is like Marxism. Darwinism, I must stress, the sibilant distinguishing the man from his message. By itself, Darwin’s theory of random variation and natural selection would simply be a hopelessly premature 19th century thought experiment, vastly less important than Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field, which was completed at roughly the same time. But like confined quarks (or any number of quacks), Darwin’s theory never appears by itself in contemporary thought ...
… Let me interrupt you. Can you be a little clearer on the difference, as you see it, between Darwin’s theory and Darwinism? …
DB: It is a matter of attitude and sentiment, Look, for thousands of intellectuals, becoming a Marxist was an experience of disturbing intensity. The decision having been made, the world became simpler, brighter, cleaner, clearer. A number of contemporary intellectuals react in the same way when it comes to the Old Boy – Darwin, I mean. Having renounced Freud and all his wiles, the literary critic Frederick Crews – a man of some taste and sophistication – has recently reported seeing in random variations and natural selection the same light he once saw in castration anxiety or penis envy. He has accordingly immersed himself in the emollient of his own enthusiasm. Every now and then he contributes an essay to The New York Review of Books revealing that his ignorance of any conceivable scientific issue has not been an impediment to his satisfaction.
Another example – I’ve got hundreds. Daniel Dennett has in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea written about natural selection as the single greatest idea in human intellectual history. Anyone reading Dennett understands, of course, that his acquaintance with great ideas has been remarkably fastidious. Mais, je divague …
In the case of both Crews and Dennett, it’s that God-awful eagerness to explain everything that is the give-away. The eagerness is entirely academic or even literary. But, you know, what sociologists call prole-drift is present even in a world without proles. Look at Christopher Hitchens – very bright, very able. Just recently he felt compelled to release his views on evolution to a public not known eagerly to be waiting for them. What does he have to say? Pretty much that he doesn’t know anything about art but he knows what he likes. The truth of the matter, however, is that he pretty much likes what he knows, and what he knows is what he has heard smart scientists say. Were smart scientists to say that a form of yeast is intermediate between the great apes and human beings, Hitchens would, no doubt, conceive an increased respect for yeast. But that’s a journalist for you: all zeal and no content. No, no, not you, of course. You’re not like the others.
… Thank you, I’m sure. I am still not sure what you are getting at when you refer to Darwinism as an ideological system? Many biologists such as Paul Gross simply reject the term altogether …
DB: Yes, I know. The term – Darwinism, I mean – has been a long standing banana peel for poor Gross. No matter how often he swears not to slip, he can inevitably be spotted straddling that banana and about to slip-up all over again. Ah, there he goes – vawhoomp. I have a service that lets me know every time Gross topples.
But enough about Gross. Let’s get back to me. It’s not that easy to say what Darwinism amounts to, but then again, it was never easy to say what Marxism amounted to either. If you look at Marxists journals from the 1930s, the party line shifted all the time, so much so that in the 1940s, Stalin had to sit down and write an account of the principles of socialism. It reads very much like a high-school textbook in biology – a very sophisticated high-school textbook, of course. The real mark of an ideological system is its presumptuousness. There is nothing it cannot explain by means of a few trite ideas. Why is romantic love a sign of bourgeois decadence, Comrade? Because, Comrade, it represents a form of false consciousness. In Darwinism, natural selection has displaced such old standbys as false consciousness or the class struggle, Comrade. You don’t mind if I call you Comrade? It’s the least I can do ….
… But …
DB: Take the short essay in a most recent issue of The London Review by Thomas Jones, one of the review’s editors – no dope, by the way. “Since we use our brains to make up stories, and to make sense of the stories of others,” Jones says, “it is hard to disagree with the idea that the capacity for storytelling is the result of evolution.”
And here’s something Stephen Pinker said, it’s even better ...
… But look, someone like Jones is simply stating the obvious – like everything else, literature must be understood in evolutionary terms. What other terms are there? …
DB: Why must literature be understood in any terms beyond the literary? Just recently someone named David Barash – an evolutionary psychologist, it goes without saying – published a book together with his wife called Madame Bovary’s Ovaries. Her ovaries? Look, set aside the appalling vulgarity of the book and its title, its almost unfathomable literary and intellectual crudeness. To talk about Madame Bovary’s ovaries is a little like looking at one of Rembrandt’s late self-portraits of his face and wondering whether the man suffered from bunions. What we know of the man is right there on the canvass. Nothing else. To imagine that somehow there is a real woman to be found in Flaubert’s nacreous masterpiece is to regard art the way an infant or a primitive regards art.
If you think you can take the story of Anna Karenina and connect its meaning to any anatomical, physiological, neurological, or biochemical feature of the human brain as it is now understood, by all means go ahead. We do not know how the human brain establishes that the word ‘cat’ designates a cat. Or that it does. Or that it has. Or that it can.
But even setting that aside, what reason do we have for supposing that differential reproduction tells us anything more about the anatomy of criticism than the class struggle tells us about the anatomy of love? That’s a learned reference, by the way …
… I have read Northrop Frye, Mr. Berlinski …
DB: Glad to hear it. Then you understand how pointless it is to coordinate our remarkable human powers with a filter so crude as the biological desire to promote oneself into the main chance.
You wouldn’t argue that the capacity for carpet-weaving is the result of evolution, would you?
… Yes, I would …
DB: Well, you would be wrong. Men and women make up stories, wander around foreign cities, take up sky-diving, invent financial swindles, learn to speak Mandarin, or weave carpets out of silk pretty much because they feel like it. Evolution has nothing to do with it.
… But how they feel and the decisions they make are shaped by evolution …
DB: That’s trivially true. If human beings did not have the kinds of brains they do, they wouldn’t make the choices they do. Different livers would probably lead to different choices, too, and who knows what a man shaped by evolution to have six sexual organs might contemplate.
… Oh please, isn’t that just clever word play? If the human brain did not arise by evolution, how did it arise? …
DB: I have no idea. It’s not my problem.
… That is an awfully convenient out for you …
DB: Sure. It’s the same out that Darwinian biologists take when it comes to the origins of life. Not our problem. What’s good enough for Richard Dawkins is good enough for me.
… How do you see Darwinism in the larger context of social or academic attitudes …
DB: A congeries of sentimental attitudes are at work in the humanities – atheism, moral relativism, materialism. They are incarnated locally in the United States by Richard Rorty, a philosopher, I must say, who while espousing irony as an antidote to anomie (and anything else that ails you) seems to me, at least, to exhibit an almost elephantine earnestness in everything he writes. The man could paralyze an infantry battalion just by beginning a lecture. I may have to consult with my spies in the Pentagon about this. Within the sciences, the governing attitude is often designated by the word ‘naturalism,’ especially by those sophisticated enough to know that adverting to the Temple of Reason after Robespierre might not be a good idea.
… Meaning? …
DB: Hard to say – again. Naturalism is sometimes taken to mean that there is only one body of human knowledge, and that is contemporary science; at other times, it is taken to mean that there is only one method by which knowledge can be acquired, and that is the scientific method. This is a little like arguing that cabbage is the only food and that prayer is the only way to get it.
… Why? …
DB: Mathematics is a counter-example to the first thesis, and the law, a counter-example to the second. In any case, science has no more method than golf ...
… You don’t believe that …
DB: You mean about the scientific method? Certainly I do. Where science has a method, it is trivial – look carefully, cut the cards, weigh the evidence, don’t let yourself be fooled, do an experiment if you can. These are principles of kennel management as well as quantum theory. Where science isn’t trivial, it has no method. What method did Einstein follow, or Pauli, or Kekulé? Kekulé saw the ring structure of benzene in what he called a waking dream. Some method.
… I wonder whether we could get back to naturalism …
DB: A vos ordres. Carl Sagan seems to have captured the emotional content of naturalism when he remarked that the universe is all that there is, was, or would ever be. A curious sentence, don’t you think, and one that embodies a curious claim? Its denial is a contradiction, and so the claim is itself a logical triviality. This has not discouraged any number of commentators from embracing it warmly. Eugenie Scott is a small squirrel-like creature who is often sent out to defend Darwin. Whenever doubts are raised, she withdraws a naturalistic nut from her cache and flaunts it proudly. And if naturalism won’t do, there is always methodological naturalism. One nut is, after all, pretty much as good as another.
… What is the connection between Darwinism and naturalism? …
DB: There is none – at least if by a connection, you mean a logical connection. There is, however, a sentimental connection. A commitment to naturalism, however defined, very often makes Darwin’s theory seem more plausible than it otherwise might be. Naturalism is sentimentally a sufficient condition for Darwinism. By the same token, Darwinism is sentimentally a necessary condition for naturalism. Richard Lewontin has made this point explicitly, by the way. The point is elementary but it explains a good deal, as so many elementary points do. Biologists persuaded that there is nothing out there but atoms and the void are naturally made apprehensive by the thought that Darwin’s theory might be false, for in that case, it follows by contraposition that naturalism might be false as well.
… What do you think accounts for these sentimental connections, as you put it …
DB: Fashion, for one thing. It’s what everyone seems to be saying in the faculty dining room at Mongaheela State Community College, or at The New York Review of Books, much the same environment, now that I think about it. A good deal of this is changing, I should hasten to add, as academics prepared to sneer at religious experience or moral absolutes remember just who happens to pay their salaries. This consideration alone has a wonderfully clarifying effect on one’s theoretical commitments.
… If Darwinism is so unworthy of respect, what is the appeal of Darwinism? After all, a great many scientists disagree with you. They can’t all be fools, after all…
DB: I’m not sure why not.
http://www.idthefuture.com/2006/03/an_interview_with_david_berlin.html#more
Jonathan Witt
Center for Science and Culture communications director Rob Crowther suggested I post to IDtheFuture a recent interview with expatriate philosopher, mathematician, science writer, novelist and Darwin scourge David Berlinski. The interviewer is a Jewish agnostic living in Paris.
… Why do you think the debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution has taken on such a nasty turn …
DB: Nasty, eh? If so, the nastiness is not entirely ecumenical. As far as I can tell, only one side is now occupying the gutter, even though the gutter is, as gutters generally are, more than spacious enough for two. But you raise a good question. Why are Darwinian biologists so outraged? Like the San Andreas fault, the indignation conspicuous at blogs such as The Panda’s Thumb or Talk Reason is now visible from outer space.
There is a lot at stake, obviously. Money, prestige, power, influence – they all play a role. Darwinism is an ideological system and when such systems come under threat, their supporters react in predictable ways. Freedom of thought very often appears as an inconvenience to those with a position to protect. Look at the attempts made to humiliate Rick Sternberg at the Smithsonian Institute, or the campaign now underway to do the same thing to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State. There is nothing surprising in all this. I myself believe that the world would be suitably improved if those with whom I disagreed were simply to shut up. What is curious is how quickly the Darwinian establishment has begun to appear vulnerable ….
… Not to scientists …
DB: No, perhaps not. But to everyone else. Consider the latest Pew poll. “Two-thirds of Americans,” the New York Times reported, “say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.” But even among those quite persuaded of Darwin’s theory, “18 percent said that evolution was ‘guided by a supreme being.’” Now these are astonishing figures. They represent an authentic popular revolt against elite thought. I cannot remember anything like it. The fact that so many Darwinian biologists are utterly tone-deaf when it comes to debate has hardly helped their case. It is no small thing to have appeared before the American public in a way that suggests both illimitable arrogance and scientific insecurity.
… With all due respect, Mr. Berlinski, there are times reading what you have written when it seems that you are right down there in the gutter with the best of them. You did, after all, refer to Richard Dawkins as – and I quote – “a remarkably reptilian character” ….
DB: Did I? Well, mine has been an exercise in defensive slumming.
… I see. What really accounts for your hostility to figures such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins? …
DB: In the case of Daniel Dennett, I think contempt might be a better word than hostility, and indifference a better word still. There are, of course, lots more where he came from – P.Z. Myers, for example, or Eugenie Scott, or Jason Rosenhouse. Throw in Steven Weinberg, just to reach an even number ….
… The Nobel Laureate? …
DB: None other.
… But Dawkins …
DB: An interesting case, very louche – fascinating and repellant. Fascinating because like Noam Chomsky he has the strange power effortlessly to command attention. Just possibly both men are descended from a line of simian carnival barkers, great apes who adventitiously found employment at a circus. I really should look at this more closely. Repellent because Dawkins is that depressingly familiar figure – the intellectual fanatic. What is it that he has said? “It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)”. Substitute ‘Allah’ for ‘evolution,’ and these words might have been uttered by some fanatical Mullah just itching to get busy with a little head-chopping. If he ever gets tired of Oxford, Dawkins could probably find a home at Finsbury Park.
… You do not, I gather, think much of the kind of atheism Dawkins is concerned to promote …
DB: It’s pretty much the sort of stuff Bertrand Russell used to put out when he needed to knock-off a popular best-seller or dazzle one of his mistresses. You see, my dear, belief in god is no better than belief in a teacup orbiting Mars, whereupon my dear would generally begin loosening her undergarments. The fact is that these kinds of arguments have been known to embarrass a wart hog. This has been tested at zoos, by the way, and the experiments widely reported.
… But why should we take seriously religious beliefs that are lacking in evidence?
DB: We shouldn’t. But asking someone like Richard Dawkins about the evidence for God’s existence is a little like asking a quadruple amputee to run the marathon.
The interesting point is elsewhere. There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time ….
… Come again …
DB: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects.
… And this is something that you, a secular Jew, believe? …
DB: What a question! I feel like I’m being interviewed by the Dean at some horrible community college. Do you believe in the university’s mission – that sort of thing. Look, I have no religious convictions and no religious beliefs. What I do believe is that theology is no more an impossible achievement than mathematics. The same rational standards apply. Does the system make sense; does it explain something? Are there deep principles at work. Is it productive?
… You know, Dawkins, at least, is quite clear that insofar as religion is expressed as a sense of wonder, he counts himself a religious man ....
DB: … Sure. But that’s because he has found it remarkably convenient to associate his views with those of Albert Einstein – you know, the standard starry sky at night, my goodness the universe is wonderful routine. Why should Dawkins, of all people, find the universe wonderful if he also believes it is largely a self-sustaining material object, something bigger than a head of cabbage but not appreciably different in kind? The whole place supposedly has no meaning, no point, no purpose, and no reason for its existence beyond itself. Sounds horrible to me. Wonder is the last reaction I’d expect. It’s like being thrilled by Newark, New Jersey. A universe that is nothing more than a collection of atoms whizzing around in the void is a material slum …
…How would you react to the argument that Dawkins has made that any form of religion that goes beyond the scientific facts about the universe really represents a form of brainwashing …
DB: He’s probably right. Most education is a form of brainwashing – so much better in French, by the way, lavage de cerveau. Give a child to the Jesuits, they say, and ten years later the man will cringe when he spots the Cross. But look, ten years or so spent studying physics is a pretty effective form of brainwashing as well. You emerge into the daylight blinking weakly and talking about an endless number of universes stacked on top of one another like an old-fashioned Maine pancake breakfast. Or you start babbling inanely about how meaningless the universe is. But if you ask me just who is the more credulous, the more suggestible, the dopier, the more perfectly prepared to convey absurdity to an almost inconceivable pitch of personal enthusiasm – a well-trained Jesuit or a Ph.D. in quantum physics, I’ll go with the physicist every time. There is nothing these people won’t believe. No wonder used-car salesmen love them. Biologists are, of course, worse. Tell them that in the future Richard Dawkins is going to conduct a personal invasion of Hell in order to roust the creationists, and The Panda’s Thumb will at once start vibrating with ticket sales.
… Perhaps this isn’t the most productive of topics to pursue …
DB: That’s fine. You lead, I’ll follow …
…Can you say a little bit more by what you mean by an ideological system?...
DB: Marxism is an ideological system, or was, and Darwinism is like Marxism. Darwinism, I must stress, the sibilant distinguishing the man from his message. By itself, Darwin’s theory of random variation and natural selection would simply be a hopelessly premature 19th century thought experiment, vastly less important than Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field, which was completed at roughly the same time. But like confined quarks (or any number of quacks), Darwin’s theory never appears by itself in contemporary thought ...
… Let me interrupt you. Can you be a little clearer on the difference, as you see it, between Darwin’s theory and Darwinism? …
DB: It is a matter of attitude and sentiment, Look, for thousands of intellectuals, becoming a Marxist was an experience of disturbing intensity. The decision having been made, the world became simpler, brighter, cleaner, clearer. A number of contemporary intellectuals react in the same way when it comes to the Old Boy – Darwin, I mean. Having renounced Freud and all his wiles, the literary critic Frederick Crews – a man of some taste and sophistication – has recently reported seeing in random variations and natural selection the same light he once saw in castration anxiety or penis envy. He has accordingly immersed himself in the emollient of his own enthusiasm. Every now and then he contributes an essay to The New York Review of Books revealing that his ignorance of any conceivable scientific issue has not been an impediment to his satisfaction.
Another example – I’ve got hundreds. Daniel Dennett has in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea written about natural selection as the single greatest idea in human intellectual history. Anyone reading Dennett understands, of course, that his acquaintance with great ideas has been remarkably fastidious. Mais, je divague …
In the case of both Crews and Dennett, it’s that God-awful eagerness to explain everything that is the give-away. The eagerness is entirely academic or even literary. But, you know, what sociologists call prole-drift is present even in a world without proles. Look at Christopher Hitchens – very bright, very able. Just recently he felt compelled to release his views on evolution to a public not known eagerly to be waiting for them. What does he have to say? Pretty much that he doesn’t know anything about art but he knows what he likes. The truth of the matter, however, is that he pretty much likes what he knows, and what he knows is what he has heard smart scientists say. Were smart scientists to say that a form of yeast is intermediate between the great apes and human beings, Hitchens would, no doubt, conceive an increased respect for yeast. But that’s a journalist for you: all zeal and no content. No, no, not you, of course. You’re not like the others.
… Thank you, I’m sure. I am still not sure what you are getting at when you refer to Darwinism as an ideological system? Many biologists such as Paul Gross simply reject the term altogether …
DB: Yes, I know. The term – Darwinism, I mean – has been a long standing banana peel for poor Gross. No matter how often he swears not to slip, he can inevitably be spotted straddling that banana and about to slip-up all over again. Ah, there he goes – vawhoomp. I have a service that lets me know every time Gross topples.
But enough about Gross. Let’s get back to me. It’s not that easy to say what Darwinism amounts to, but then again, it was never easy to say what Marxism amounted to either. If you look at Marxists journals from the 1930s, the party line shifted all the time, so much so that in the 1940s, Stalin had to sit down and write an account of the principles of socialism. It reads very much like a high-school textbook in biology – a very sophisticated high-school textbook, of course. The real mark of an ideological system is its presumptuousness. There is nothing it cannot explain by means of a few trite ideas. Why is romantic love a sign of bourgeois decadence, Comrade? Because, Comrade, it represents a form of false consciousness. In Darwinism, natural selection has displaced such old standbys as false consciousness or the class struggle, Comrade. You don’t mind if I call you Comrade? It’s the least I can do ….
… But …
DB: Take the short essay in a most recent issue of The London Review by Thomas Jones, one of the review’s editors – no dope, by the way. “Since we use our brains to make up stories, and to make sense of the stories of others,” Jones says, “it is hard to disagree with the idea that the capacity for storytelling is the result of evolution.”
And here’s something Stephen Pinker said, it’s even better ...
… But look, someone like Jones is simply stating the obvious – like everything else, literature must be understood in evolutionary terms. What other terms are there? …
DB: Why must literature be understood in any terms beyond the literary? Just recently someone named David Barash – an evolutionary psychologist, it goes without saying – published a book together with his wife called Madame Bovary’s Ovaries. Her ovaries? Look, set aside the appalling vulgarity of the book and its title, its almost unfathomable literary and intellectual crudeness. To talk about Madame Bovary’s ovaries is a little like looking at one of Rembrandt’s late self-portraits of his face and wondering whether the man suffered from bunions. What we know of the man is right there on the canvass. Nothing else. To imagine that somehow there is a real woman to be found in Flaubert’s nacreous masterpiece is to regard art the way an infant or a primitive regards art.
If you think you can take the story of Anna Karenina and connect its meaning to any anatomical, physiological, neurological, or biochemical feature of the human brain as it is now understood, by all means go ahead. We do not know how the human brain establishes that the word ‘cat’ designates a cat. Or that it does. Or that it has. Or that it can.
But even setting that aside, what reason do we have for supposing that differential reproduction tells us anything more about the anatomy of criticism than the class struggle tells us about the anatomy of love? That’s a learned reference, by the way …
… I have read Northrop Frye, Mr. Berlinski …
DB: Glad to hear it. Then you understand how pointless it is to coordinate our remarkable human powers with a filter so crude as the biological desire to promote oneself into the main chance.
You wouldn’t argue that the capacity for carpet-weaving is the result of evolution, would you?
… Yes, I would …
DB: Well, you would be wrong. Men and women make up stories, wander around foreign cities, take up sky-diving, invent financial swindles, learn to speak Mandarin, or weave carpets out of silk pretty much because they feel like it. Evolution has nothing to do with it.
… But how they feel and the decisions they make are shaped by evolution …
DB: That’s trivially true. If human beings did not have the kinds of brains they do, they wouldn’t make the choices they do. Different livers would probably lead to different choices, too, and who knows what a man shaped by evolution to have six sexual organs might contemplate.
… Oh please, isn’t that just clever word play? If the human brain did not arise by evolution, how did it arise? …
DB: I have no idea. It’s not my problem.
… That is an awfully convenient out for you …
DB: Sure. It’s the same out that Darwinian biologists take when it comes to the origins of life. Not our problem. What’s good enough for Richard Dawkins is good enough for me.
… How do you see Darwinism in the larger context of social or academic attitudes …
DB: A congeries of sentimental attitudes are at work in the humanities – atheism, moral relativism, materialism. They are incarnated locally in the United States by Richard Rorty, a philosopher, I must say, who while espousing irony as an antidote to anomie (and anything else that ails you) seems to me, at least, to exhibit an almost elephantine earnestness in everything he writes. The man could paralyze an infantry battalion just by beginning a lecture. I may have to consult with my spies in the Pentagon about this. Within the sciences, the governing attitude is often designated by the word ‘naturalism,’ especially by those sophisticated enough to know that adverting to the Temple of Reason after Robespierre might not be a good idea.
… Meaning? …
DB: Hard to say – again. Naturalism is sometimes taken to mean that there is only one body of human knowledge, and that is contemporary science; at other times, it is taken to mean that there is only one method by which knowledge can be acquired, and that is the scientific method. This is a little like arguing that cabbage is the only food and that prayer is the only way to get it.
… Why? …
DB: Mathematics is a counter-example to the first thesis, and the law, a counter-example to the second. In any case, science has no more method than golf ...
… You don’t believe that …
DB: You mean about the scientific method? Certainly I do. Where science has a method, it is trivial – look carefully, cut the cards, weigh the evidence, don’t let yourself be fooled, do an experiment if you can. These are principles of kennel management as well as quantum theory. Where science isn’t trivial, it has no method. What method did Einstein follow, or Pauli, or Kekulé? Kekulé saw the ring structure of benzene in what he called a waking dream. Some method.
… I wonder whether we could get back to naturalism …
DB: A vos ordres. Carl Sagan seems to have captured the emotional content of naturalism when he remarked that the universe is all that there is, was, or would ever be. A curious sentence, don’t you think, and one that embodies a curious claim? Its denial is a contradiction, and so the claim is itself a logical triviality. This has not discouraged any number of commentators from embracing it warmly. Eugenie Scott is a small squirrel-like creature who is often sent out to defend Darwin. Whenever doubts are raised, she withdraws a naturalistic nut from her cache and flaunts it proudly. And if naturalism won’t do, there is always methodological naturalism. One nut is, after all, pretty much as good as another.
… What is the connection between Darwinism and naturalism? …
DB: There is none – at least if by a connection, you mean a logical connection. There is, however, a sentimental connection. A commitment to naturalism, however defined, very often makes Darwin’s theory seem more plausible than it otherwise might be. Naturalism is sentimentally a sufficient condition for Darwinism. By the same token, Darwinism is sentimentally a necessary condition for naturalism. Richard Lewontin has made this point explicitly, by the way. The point is elementary but it explains a good deal, as so many elementary points do. Biologists persuaded that there is nothing out there but atoms and the void are naturally made apprehensive by the thought that Darwin’s theory might be false, for in that case, it follows by contraposition that naturalism might be false as well.
… What do you think accounts for these sentimental connections, as you put it …
DB: Fashion, for one thing. It’s what everyone seems to be saying in the faculty dining room at Mongaheela State Community College, or at The New York Review of Books, much the same environment, now that I think about it. A good deal of this is changing, I should hasten to add, as academics prepared to sneer at religious experience or moral absolutes remember just who happens to pay their salaries. This consideration alone has a wonderfully clarifying effect on one’s theoretical commitments.
… If Darwinism is so unworthy of respect, what is the appeal of Darwinism? After all, a great many scientists disagree with you. They can’t all be fools, after all…
DB: I’m not sure why not.
http://www.idthefuture.com/2006/03/an_interview_with_david_berlin.html#more
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Private charity & social justice
GOOSEHENRY SAID:
“I recently read Friedmans ‘Capitalism&Freedom’ where he puts forward som good arguments for laissez-faire. He does however agree that alleviation of poverty should be state financed, due to the fact that everyone benefits from the fact that poverty is alleviated. I was wondering if you agree that the state should have some responsibility in these matters? How much in that case and how is it justified, on capitalistic grounds?”
That’s a very broad question, so it’s not simple to answer.
The poor may be poor for a variety of reasons.
1.They may be poor due to institutional poverty. You might have a Marxist regime with economic policies which impoverish the populace.
In a sense, the state could alleviate that problem by changing its policies. But the state is the source of the problem, so short of armed insurrection, we can’t look to the state to solve the problem when the state created the problem.
Likewise, you might have a banana republic in which drug lords confiscate most of the wealth, and bribe or extort gov’t officials to insure their monopoly.
Since, in that situation, the state is on the take, we can’t look to the state to clean up the mess. It’s like asking a junkie to police the pharmacy.
You can also have well-intentioned social programs that foster a culture of dependency, delinquency, and poverty.
2.Or people may be poor because the area in which they live is too inhospitable to support that population density. Not much the state can do about that.
3.Or people may be poor due to their lifestyle choices. Once again, there’s not much the state can do about that.
4.Apropos (1)-(3), people can be poor through no fault of their own, or bring it on themselves. Take people with preexisting medical conditions.
i) I saw a story about a woman whose mother, grandmother, and three brothers all died from diabetes. She herself has diabetes because she’s morbidly obese.
In that case, she knowingly and willfully engages in self-destructive behavior. I have no obligation to foot the bill for her healthcare. Same thing with chain-smokers who contract lung-cancer.
ii) Then you have coal miners who come down with black lung disease. That’s an occupational hazard, but that was contracted from an honorable effort to provide themselves and their kin. A very different situation than (i). They were trying to do the responsible thing, given their limited opportunities.
At the very least, the company should be required by law to provide worker’s comp.
iii) Then you have people who indulge in high-risk behavior when they are young and foolish, but have tried to kick the habit. They realize that their past “indiscretions” were imprudent and destructive. They’d like to turn their life around. Yet they may have ruined their health in the process. So they can’t completely turn back the clock.
Recovering alcoholics and drug-attics are paradigm-cases. They’re entitled to more compassion that someone who’s impenitent. Someone who continues to pursue his self-destructive behavior.
iv) Then you have people who are disabled or incapacitated by an accident or illness through no fault of their own. They, too, are entitled to more compassion than someone who is willfully reckless.
v) Social responsibilities also vary according to our relationship to the individual.
If a junkie is a perfect stranger, then I don’t have the same obligations to him that I have in case the junkie is my kid brother or childhood friend.
In the case of a sibling or best friend, I have an obligation to do whatever I can–within reason. I don’t have the same degree of obligation in the case of a perfect stranger.
vi) A supportive family should be our first resort. Private charity should be our second resort. Public assistance should be our last resort.
5.Let’s also keep in mind that many social ills are due to sin. Evangelism and discipleship can lessen many social ills.
6.Finally, Greg Bahnsen summarizes some Biblical principles of charity and social justice:
How, then, would God's word direct us to show concern for the poor and needy?[3]
First, by not hiding from their needs -- isolating ourselves so that we need not encounter the cries of the poor. The Bible condemns "stopping the ears" and "hiding the eyes" (Proverbs 21:13; 28:27), not so subtle ways of remaining insensitive to the plight of the less fortunate around us. "The righteous takes knowledge of the cause of the poor" (Proverbs 29:7). Indeed, when he gives a dinner, he is acquainted with and able to invite the poor who cannot recompense him (Luke 14:12-14).
Second, and most obviously, we are urged to show neighborly pity to the poor (cf. Proverbs 14:21) by giving generously to relieve their specific needs -- making direct gifts to buy groceries or clothes, pay utility bills, underwrite medical treatment, etc. (Matthew 25:35-39; Luke 14:12-14). "The righteous gives and withholds not" (Proverbs 21:26; cf. 22:9).
Third, God's law protects and provides favorable social arrangements for the poor and needy, such as the prohibitions on taking the necessities of life as collateral (Exodus 22:26-27; Deuteronomy 24:22-13) or charging interest on loans made to them (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35-37; Deuteronomy 15:7-11; 23:19-20). It sometimes happens that a person cannot afford a donation to a brother in need, but can loan him some money for a time. It is a Christian virtue not to turn away those who would borrow from us (Matthew 5:42), expecting nothing in return (Luke 6:35). In such a case, it would be immoral to profit from your brother's distress: the loan may not carry interest charges. God Himself will pay back such a good deed (Proverbs 19:17), whereas the violation of this command from God will lead you to lose your financial gain to someone else more gracious (Proverbs 28:8).
Fourth, the law of God also provides for the poor through the favorable social arrangement of requiring us to allow gleaning (Leviticus 19:9-10; 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19-20). The leftovers in our fields, the pickings which fall to the ground, and the unreaped corners of the fields are to be made available to those who are in need. The poor may hereby work to support themselves and may meet their families' needs with whatever they are able to carry away (thus placing natural requirements and restraints upon the scope of this provision). The application of this divine requirement outside of agricultural settings is not inconceivable (e.g., donation of our still-useable clothes, furniture, appliances, cash change from the market or restaurant, etc.).
Fifth, the word of God offers us wisdom to see that it is inappropriate and worthy of disapprobation for someone to use his advantage in the free market to drive up prices on items which are basic necessities of life. "He who withholds grain, the people shall curse him; but blessing shall be upon the head of him who sells it" (Proverbs 11:26). The greed which would corner the market on some commodity which is a staple of life, calculating to withhold it from sale in order to make people desperate and increase the profit on its sale later, will be cursed.
Sixth, the scriptures require us to protect the property rights of those in society who virtually have no voice, who are easiest to exploit, and who have the least political clout -- people like the orphans and widows (Deuteronomy 10:18; Psalm 68:5; Proverbs 15:25; 22:28; 23:10-11). Tampering with their boundaries or in other ways diminishing the use and value of their property and belongings -- whether through legislation or deceptive contracts or manipulative lawsuits -- provokes the vengeance of their Redeemer according to the Bible, and we should intercede to take their side as well. This is especially needful in a culture where it has become so costly (and tricky) in civil court to resolve disputes and guard one's rights.
Seventh, Christians who plead for the rights of the needy in lawsuits as well as those who are entrusted with judicial authority, such as judges in our courts, are especially commanded by God to relieve the easy social oppression of the needy and to guard against judicial prejudice toward them. God expects kings to "deliver the poor and needy" (Ps. 72:2-4, 12-14) -- which means, according to the Biblical text itself, that they are to "break their oppressors" by securing fairness in the courts and protecting them from "bribes," "fraud and violence" (Leviticus 19:15; Ex. 23:3, 6; Ps. 82:1-4; Amos 5:11-12; cf. Proverbs 22:22-23; 29:14).
Eighth, another way in which those in need are defrauded is when wealthy employers take advantage of them by delaying or holding back the wages of their workers (Leviticus 19:13; James 5:1-6). In such cases the Christian must come to the worker's defense and seek the fulfillment of obligations made to him, lest his economic condition be further worsened. Likewise, Christians ought to take a stand for protecting the freedom of the poor in the marketplace so that they are guaranteed an opportunity to compete for jobs (e.g., over against closed union shops, etc.; cf. Matthew 20:1-16) and to compete at a price that renders them more likely to be hired (e.g., over against wage requirements set by the state, etc.; cf. Revelation 13:17). To deny people the freedom to compete in the marketplace and thereby enjoy upward economic mobility violates the love we are to have for our neighbors and transgresses the golden rule.
Ninth, Christian families must make it a point to make provision for meeting the economic needs of their family members (1 Timothy 5:8), in particular those who fall upon hard times. This will call not only for industry and avoidance of sloth to take care of ordinary living expenses (e.g., Proverbs 6:6-11; 10:4; 19:15; 20:4; 23:21; 24:30-34), but also foresight and frugality to meet emergency needs which could not be predicted (cf. e.g., Leviticus 25:25, 49). Likewise, as an extension of such loving provision, families may show benevolence to fellow-believers who have become insolvent debtors by allowing the poor brother voluntarily to sell himself (actually, his labor) into their servitude, thereby coming to be treated and cared for as part of the household. His debts would be paid (Leviticus 25:39), he would learn responsible labor and financial saving (perhaps enough to buy his own release: Leviticus 25:49), and in time he would be given liberal provisions to start a new life (Deuteronomy 15:14).
Tenth and very importantly, the Christian congregation should corporately minister to the needs of the poor. The office of deacon was specifically ordained as a ministry of mercy to the needy, for instance the daily assistance to widows (Acts 6:1-6). Tithes and offerings which God calls for are regularly to be used for the relief of the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).[4] And special offerings are to be taken by the church to take care of Christians suffering from special hardships or emergencies (e.g., I Corinthians 16:1-2; Romans 15:25-27; 2 Corinthians 8). The charitable agency of the church is one of the most enduring, powerful and efficient means of distributing financial aid to people in need. Such distribution of charity is motivated by voluntary and divinely sanctioned sacrifices and offerings from God's people. Its resources ought to be a ten-percent baseline of the earnings, however great or small, of all of God's people -- then further fueled by the freewill offerings of grateful believers who have been blessed with enough to meet their own needs. The oversight and administration are local, accountable to the congregation, and far less vulnerable to freeloading, fraud, and the expenses of a top-heavy bureaucracy.
http://www.reformed.org/webfiles/antithesis/index.html?mainframe=/webfiles/antithesis/v1n2/ant_v1n2_poor.html
“I recently read Friedmans ‘Capitalism&Freedom’ where he puts forward som good arguments for laissez-faire. He does however agree that alleviation of poverty should be state financed, due to the fact that everyone benefits from the fact that poverty is alleviated. I was wondering if you agree that the state should have some responsibility in these matters? How much in that case and how is it justified, on capitalistic grounds?”
That’s a very broad question, so it’s not simple to answer.
The poor may be poor for a variety of reasons.
1.They may be poor due to institutional poverty. You might have a Marxist regime with economic policies which impoverish the populace.
In a sense, the state could alleviate that problem by changing its policies. But the state is the source of the problem, so short of armed insurrection, we can’t look to the state to solve the problem when the state created the problem.
Likewise, you might have a banana republic in which drug lords confiscate most of the wealth, and bribe or extort gov’t officials to insure their monopoly.
Since, in that situation, the state is on the take, we can’t look to the state to clean up the mess. It’s like asking a junkie to police the pharmacy.
You can also have well-intentioned social programs that foster a culture of dependency, delinquency, and poverty.
2.Or people may be poor because the area in which they live is too inhospitable to support that population density. Not much the state can do about that.
3.Or people may be poor due to their lifestyle choices. Once again, there’s not much the state can do about that.
4.Apropos (1)-(3), people can be poor through no fault of their own, or bring it on themselves. Take people with preexisting medical conditions.
i) I saw a story about a woman whose mother, grandmother, and three brothers all died from diabetes. She herself has diabetes because she’s morbidly obese.
In that case, she knowingly and willfully engages in self-destructive behavior. I have no obligation to foot the bill for her healthcare. Same thing with chain-smokers who contract lung-cancer.
ii) Then you have coal miners who come down with black lung disease. That’s an occupational hazard, but that was contracted from an honorable effort to provide themselves and their kin. A very different situation than (i). They were trying to do the responsible thing, given their limited opportunities.
At the very least, the company should be required by law to provide worker’s comp.
iii) Then you have people who indulge in high-risk behavior when they are young and foolish, but have tried to kick the habit. They realize that their past “indiscretions” were imprudent and destructive. They’d like to turn their life around. Yet they may have ruined their health in the process. So they can’t completely turn back the clock.
Recovering alcoholics and drug-attics are paradigm-cases. They’re entitled to more compassion that someone who’s impenitent. Someone who continues to pursue his self-destructive behavior.
iv) Then you have people who are disabled or incapacitated by an accident or illness through no fault of their own. They, too, are entitled to more compassion than someone who is willfully reckless.
v) Social responsibilities also vary according to our relationship to the individual.
If a junkie is a perfect stranger, then I don’t have the same obligations to him that I have in case the junkie is my kid brother or childhood friend.
In the case of a sibling or best friend, I have an obligation to do whatever I can–within reason. I don’t have the same degree of obligation in the case of a perfect stranger.
vi) A supportive family should be our first resort. Private charity should be our second resort. Public assistance should be our last resort.
5.Let’s also keep in mind that many social ills are due to sin. Evangelism and discipleship can lessen many social ills.
6.Finally, Greg Bahnsen summarizes some Biblical principles of charity and social justice:
How, then, would God's word direct us to show concern for the poor and needy?[3]
First, by not hiding from their needs -- isolating ourselves so that we need not encounter the cries of the poor. The Bible condemns "stopping the ears" and "hiding the eyes" (Proverbs 21:13; 28:27), not so subtle ways of remaining insensitive to the plight of the less fortunate around us. "The righteous takes knowledge of the cause of the poor" (Proverbs 29:7). Indeed, when he gives a dinner, he is acquainted with and able to invite the poor who cannot recompense him (Luke 14:12-14).
Second, and most obviously, we are urged to show neighborly pity to the poor (cf. Proverbs 14:21) by giving generously to relieve their specific needs -- making direct gifts to buy groceries or clothes, pay utility bills, underwrite medical treatment, etc. (Matthew 25:35-39; Luke 14:12-14). "The righteous gives and withholds not" (Proverbs 21:26; cf. 22:9).
Third, God's law protects and provides favorable social arrangements for the poor and needy, such as the prohibitions on taking the necessities of life as collateral (Exodus 22:26-27; Deuteronomy 24:22-13) or charging interest on loans made to them (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35-37; Deuteronomy 15:7-11; 23:19-20). It sometimes happens that a person cannot afford a donation to a brother in need, but can loan him some money for a time. It is a Christian virtue not to turn away those who would borrow from us (Matthew 5:42), expecting nothing in return (Luke 6:35). In such a case, it would be immoral to profit from your brother's distress: the loan may not carry interest charges. God Himself will pay back such a good deed (Proverbs 19:17), whereas the violation of this command from God will lead you to lose your financial gain to someone else more gracious (Proverbs 28:8).
Fourth, the law of God also provides for the poor through the favorable social arrangement of requiring us to allow gleaning (Leviticus 19:9-10; 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19-20). The leftovers in our fields, the pickings which fall to the ground, and the unreaped corners of the fields are to be made available to those who are in need. The poor may hereby work to support themselves and may meet their families' needs with whatever they are able to carry away (thus placing natural requirements and restraints upon the scope of this provision). The application of this divine requirement outside of agricultural settings is not inconceivable (e.g., donation of our still-useable clothes, furniture, appliances, cash change from the market or restaurant, etc.).
Fifth, the word of God offers us wisdom to see that it is inappropriate and worthy of disapprobation for someone to use his advantage in the free market to drive up prices on items which are basic necessities of life. "He who withholds grain, the people shall curse him; but blessing shall be upon the head of him who sells it" (Proverbs 11:26). The greed which would corner the market on some commodity which is a staple of life, calculating to withhold it from sale in order to make people desperate and increase the profit on its sale later, will be cursed.
Sixth, the scriptures require us to protect the property rights of those in society who virtually have no voice, who are easiest to exploit, and who have the least political clout -- people like the orphans and widows (Deuteronomy 10:18; Psalm 68:5; Proverbs 15:25; 22:28; 23:10-11). Tampering with their boundaries or in other ways diminishing the use and value of their property and belongings -- whether through legislation or deceptive contracts or manipulative lawsuits -- provokes the vengeance of their Redeemer according to the Bible, and we should intercede to take their side as well. This is especially needful in a culture where it has become so costly (and tricky) in civil court to resolve disputes and guard one's rights.
Seventh, Christians who plead for the rights of the needy in lawsuits as well as those who are entrusted with judicial authority, such as judges in our courts, are especially commanded by God to relieve the easy social oppression of the needy and to guard against judicial prejudice toward them. God expects kings to "deliver the poor and needy" (Ps. 72:2-4, 12-14) -- which means, according to the Biblical text itself, that they are to "break their oppressors" by securing fairness in the courts and protecting them from "bribes," "fraud and violence" (Leviticus 19:15; Ex. 23:3, 6; Ps. 82:1-4; Amos 5:11-12; cf. Proverbs 22:22-23; 29:14).
Eighth, another way in which those in need are defrauded is when wealthy employers take advantage of them by delaying or holding back the wages of their workers (Leviticus 19:13; James 5:1-6). In such cases the Christian must come to the worker's defense and seek the fulfillment of obligations made to him, lest his economic condition be further worsened. Likewise, Christians ought to take a stand for protecting the freedom of the poor in the marketplace so that they are guaranteed an opportunity to compete for jobs (e.g., over against closed union shops, etc.; cf. Matthew 20:1-16) and to compete at a price that renders them more likely to be hired (e.g., over against wage requirements set by the state, etc.; cf. Revelation 13:17). To deny people the freedom to compete in the marketplace and thereby enjoy upward economic mobility violates the love we are to have for our neighbors and transgresses the golden rule.
Ninth, Christian families must make it a point to make provision for meeting the economic needs of their family members (1 Timothy 5:8), in particular those who fall upon hard times. This will call not only for industry and avoidance of sloth to take care of ordinary living expenses (e.g., Proverbs 6:6-11; 10:4; 19:15; 20:4; 23:21; 24:30-34), but also foresight and frugality to meet emergency needs which could not be predicted (cf. e.g., Leviticus 25:25, 49). Likewise, as an extension of such loving provision, families may show benevolence to fellow-believers who have become insolvent debtors by allowing the poor brother voluntarily to sell himself (actually, his labor) into their servitude, thereby coming to be treated and cared for as part of the household. His debts would be paid (Leviticus 25:39), he would learn responsible labor and financial saving (perhaps enough to buy his own release: Leviticus 25:49), and in time he would be given liberal provisions to start a new life (Deuteronomy 15:14).
Tenth and very importantly, the Christian congregation should corporately minister to the needs of the poor. The office of deacon was specifically ordained as a ministry of mercy to the needy, for instance the daily assistance to widows (Acts 6:1-6). Tithes and offerings which God calls for are regularly to be used for the relief of the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).[4] And special offerings are to be taken by the church to take care of Christians suffering from special hardships or emergencies (e.g., I Corinthians 16:1-2; Romans 15:25-27; 2 Corinthians 8). The charitable agency of the church is one of the most enduring, powerful and efficient means of distributing financial aid to people in need. Such distribution of charity is motivated by voluntary and divinely sanctioned sacrifices and offerings from God's people. Its resources ought to be a ten-percent baseline of the earnings, however great or small, of all of God's people -- then further fueled by the freewill offerings of grateful believers who have been blessed with enough to meet their own needs. The oversight and administration are local, accountable to the congregation, and far less vulnerable to freeloading, fraud, and the expenses of a top-heavy bureaucracy.
http://www.reformed.org/webfiles/antithesis/index.html?mainframe=/webfiles/antithesis/v1n2/ant_v1n2_poor.html
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Hart failure
Over at Green Baggins, Reed DePace has posted the 2k principles of Darryl Hart. I’m going to comment on some of his principles.
Affirmation: the state is called to punish wickedness, reward goodness, and promote peace and order.
Affirmation: church members have a duty to obey the laws of civil magistrates.
Denial: church members may not rebel against or disobey the magistrate.
i) And what is the duty of church members when the state punishes goodness and rewards wickedness?
ii) How does that mesh with the natural law component of 2k? Even if we treat the alleged silence of the NT on civil disobedience or revolution as prohibitive thereof, surely it's easy to come up with natural law justifications for civil disobedience or even revolution. Take a natural law social contract theorist. If a magistrate oversteps the bounds of the social contract, if he flagrantly violates the terms of the social contract, then wouldn't that warrant tyrannicide–as a last resort?
There's a basic tension between the 2k appeal to NT ethics and the 2k appeal to natural law ethics.
iii) Who’s the magistrate?
In many times and places you don't have an orderly transition of power. Rather, there are often rival claimants to the throne.
Take a banana republic where the opposition candidate wins fair-and-square, but still loses to the reigning dictator. One candidate has the votes, the other has the tanks.
So who should Christian citizens submit to? The de jure magistrate or the de facto magistrate?
iv) And that, in turn, raises yet another problem: which takes precedence: the law or the magistracy?
Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that civil law codifies natural law. The opposition candidate has the law on his side.
But the reigning dictator has the army behind him. He's bribed the generals and the foot-soldiers. So he's not going to step down without a fight. He must be forced from power.
So where does the civic duty of the Christian lie? Should he support the lawfully elected candidate, or the military dictator?
If natural law sets the standard, then presumably he should support the lawfully elected candidate even if that would involve fomenting revolution against the ruling party.
On the other hand, 2k proponents constantly cite Roman gov't as their limiting case. Submit to Nero. Submit to Caligula. Yet many Roman emperors were usurpers.
So do we submit to the usurper, and support the status quo–or do we support the legitimate claimant, even if that's seditious?
Does natural law require us to be traitors?
Denial: the church may not bind consciences on the basis of one minister’s or believer’s interpretation but must do so corporately through the deliberations of sessions, presbyterians [sic.], and assemblies.
i) What was the duty of church members during the Arian controversy? Wasn't Athanasius bucking the establishment?
What was the duty of Luther, Calvin, Vermingli, and other first-generation Protestants? Was it to follow their individual interpretation of Scripture or defer to the religious establishment (i.e. Rome)?
If Hart lived in 16-17C England, would he side with the Puritans or the church of England? Weren't the Puritans the dissidents in relation to the established church?
ii) Wouldn’t it be more sensible to say the true interpretation binds the conscience? After all, it's possible for individuals to be right and collectives to be wrong.
Do the sessions, presbyteries, and assemblies of the PCUSA bind the conscience?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)