Lee Irons has posted a rather odd response to prolife opponents of Obama. He says he is “respectfully” requesting that they tone down the “overwrought rhetoric.”
Before we turn to the specifics, let me say something about “respect.” There is more to respect than tone. If he’s really concerned with the respectful treatment of his opponents, then he needs to treat their arguments with respect. “Tone” is a very superficial criterion of respect. If you stereotype your opponents and caricature their positions, then you’re not being very respectful.
It’s also rather incongruous to place a priority on “tone” and “rhetoric” and “respect” when we’re talking about life and death issues where one candidate favors unrestricted abortion up to and including infanticide.
It’s morally shallow to take offense at prolife rhetoric, but not take offense at proabortion policy. One is about words, the other about actions. Shouldn’t Lee be less indignant about the rhetoric, and more indignant about the reality?
It’s like discussing table manners with a cannibal. There are bigger issues than whether the cannibal is using the right knife and fork. There’s the underlying issue of his culinary preferences. Should we call a butler or a policeman?
It reminds me of an old Vincent Price movie—Theatre of Blood. As long as you’re a homicidal gentleman, does that make it better?
However, I just hope that those of you who think voting for Obama is a sin are consistent. I trust that you will have the courage of your convictions and do the following.
Once again, before we delve into the details, suppose, for the sake of argument, that prolife opponents of Obama are inconsistent? So what?
If you’re inconsistent because your belief in A conflicts with your belief in B, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop believing in A. Maybe you should stop believing in B.
Take Lee’s own example. He says that McCain’s position on abortion is inconsistent with his position on embryonic stem cell research. And he’s right about that.
Does this mean that McCain should liberalize his position on abortion to bring it in line with his position on stem cells research? That would be consistent—consistently wrong!
It’s better to be inconsistent as long as you’re inconsistently right than to be consistently wrong. So even if prolife opponents of Obama are inconsistent in their support for McCain, this doesn’t mean they should back down on their opposition to Obama.
Moving to the specifics:
(1) You will not vote for John McCain, since he (a) supports federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, which would kill just as many millions, and (b) is opposed to a federal ban on abortion (he thinks the states should be allowed to decide).
i) Of course, this is fatally equivocal. The question at issue is not a comparison between fatalities due to abortion over against fatalities due to stem cell research, but the combined fatalities of both. Both candidates support stem cell research, but in addition to stem cell research, Obama also supports abortion. Lee is artificially isolating the consequences of each position as if it makes no practical difference whether you support one or both. But the net total is quite different.
If one candidate supports a policy which entails the death of 5,000 innocents while another candidate supports a policy which entails the death of 50,000, it would still be the lesser of two evils to support the candidate whose policy lowers the overall body count rather than raising the overall body count.
ii) In addition, a center-right candidate who is fairly prolife to begin with is more susceptible to pressure to move him further to the right, in a more consistently prolife direction, than a far left candidate.
Obama wants to sign into law a bill which would sweep away all state restrictions on abortion.
While a Federal ban would be better than leaving it up to the states, that would still save more lives than Obama’s alternative.
Frankly, one wonders what value Lee places on the life of an individual. In his book, how few lives are still worth saving?
During WWII, some brave Christians sheltered Jews from the Nazis. The number of Jews they saved was a small fraction of the number who perished at the hands of the Nazis. Does Lee think their efforts were misguided? Who cares about a few Jews? Who cares about a few babies? Or nursing home patients?
(2) In future elections, you will not vote for any candidate who has adopted a stance similar to McCain’s.
Is Lee even trying to honestly represent the prolife rationale at this point? The question at issue comes down to a choice between two candidates. It’s not an endorsement of McCain’s position. Rather, it’s a question of the contrast between his position and Obama’s.
In future elections, if we have a better choice, we should go with a better choice. That’s irrelevant to this election.
(3) In the still farther future - who knows, 20, 30, 40 years from now? - when the Supreme Court concludes that stare decisis means that Roe v. Wade is settled law and no longer open for re-consideration, and there is no viable political party that seriously intends to implement a federal ban on abortions, you will withdraw from electoral politics and stop voting altogether.
Once again, is Lee even trying to honestly represent the prolife rationale at this point?
If, hypothetically speaking, the abortion policy were frozen in place so that no candidate’s policies would either increase or decrease the rate of abortion, then that would cease to be a distinguishing issue in choosing one candidate over another.
But that’s irrelevant to this election. And it’s also a highly artificial scenario.
(4) You will seriously ponder the arguments in favor of lawful killing in defense of the innocent and explain to the rest of us why you find those arguments to be morally repugnant. I am not accusing you of holding this extreme position either explicitly or implicitly, but in view of your overwrought rhetoric, you have an obligation to give us a more cogent explanation for why your rhetoric does not, should not, and cannot lead to such a violent conclusion. It won’t do to merely claim that you disagree with it.
Lee is now descending into demagoguery. Trying to intimidate prolifer opponents of Obama into silence by implicitly comparing their position to folks who firebomb abortion clinics and assassinate abortion “providers.”
There are several problems with this comparison:
i) Does Lee have any moral threshold in politics? Would he use this same tactic to silence critics on other issues? Suppose liberals follow up on abortion and infanticide with involuntary euthanasia? Or abolish the age of consent (so that homosexuals can seduce underage minors). Would Lee say that Christians dare not speak out lest they implicitly endorse violence against the perpetrators?
Why is Lee attempting to censure moral discourse and gag the church? I suppose the reason is his radical church/state separatism, which he inherits from Kline.
Yet Lee is very selective in this regard. After all, he’s been plugging Obama. What it comes down to, then, is that if you agree with Lee, it’s okay to voice your political opinions, but if you don’t agree with Lee, that’s out-of-bounds.
ii) There’s a fairly simple answer to his challenge. The Greco-Roman Empire was very decadent. The Apostles found pagan social morality repugnant. But they didn’t espouse vigilantism.
We’re not responsible for all the evils in the world. We can’t prevent them all.
But that doesn’t mean we should stand back and do nothing. We can pursue responsible remedies.
(5) You will advocate that members of your churches who voted for either Obama or McCain be subjected to church discipline for “material cooperation with evil.”
Lee is resorting to a bluff. Indeed, his whole line of argument, if you can call it an “argument,” is “daring” prolife opponents of Obama to be more consistent.
But why shouldn’t we call his bluff? As a rule, a pastor doesn’t know how a parishioner voted. Not unless the parishioner volunteers that information.
But there are situations in which a church member’s political preferences would be subject to church discipline. What if he voted for David Duke?
Or what if he’s voting for Obama because he agrees with Obama on the social issues? What if he agrees with Obama on the morality of abortion, infanticide, and sodomy, &c.?
At that point you have to ask yourself if he has a credible profession of faith. Does he believe the Bible? Does he believe in Christian ethics, as defined by Scripture?
BTW, arguments (1)-(5) are not a set of 5 independent arguments. Rather, (1) is his primary argument. (2)-(5) are contingent on (1). If (1) is unsound, then (2)-(5) fall by the wayside.
He may be able to get a few more moderate conservative justices like Roberts and Alito, but not extremists like Scalia.
What does he mean by calling Scalia an “extremist”? That’s ordinarily a pejorative epithet.
In a best case scenario, if he does succeed in getting a few more Scalias on the court, and Roe is overturned, McCain has said he is opposed to a federal ban on abortion and merely wants to “de-federalize” the issue, i.e., to allow each state to decide. Add to that his stance on embryonic stem cell research, and “the mass murder of millions of innocent human beings” will continue under a McCain administration!
I’ve already touched on the equivocation here, but this is misleading in another respect as well. Lee is disregarding the role of Congress. Social policies don’t rise and fall on Executive policy alone. If we had a majority of social conservatives in Congress, they could improve on McCain’s position.
As Christians we all have to live and vote in the real world and that involves making pragmatic decisions that don’t always align perfectly with our theoretical ideals. None of us can cast a morally pure vote. We vote for the candidate we think is best suited to lead our country at this particular junction in history and to deal with the issues that seem to us to have the greatest moment. Perhaps you think abortion is the number one problem facing our country right now. I think you’re wrong, and we can agree to disagree on that. But unless you have the courage of your convictions and are willing to be consistent, then I would respectfully request that you tone down the rhetoric a tad.
i) Lee is trading on the stereotype of the “single-issue” voter. The insinuation is that prolife opponents of Obama agree with Obama on every other issue except for abortion. And so they jettison every other issue in deference to this solitary issue.
Now Lee has certainly spent enough time in the company of the religious right that he knows this to be a parody of the religious right. As a rule, prolife supporters of Obama think he’s wrong on a whole raft of issues.
They highlight abortion because they have moral priorities. There’s a difference between a sin and a mistake. One can be mistaken about some aspect of foreign policy or economic policy without endorsing sin. But abortion ratchets up the moral register in a way that many other issues do not.
To a large extent, abortion is not a single issue. Rather, it functions as a hendiadys for a bundle of social issues. Implicit in abortion is a whole eugenic agenda. Likewise, folks who support abortion are socially liberal on abortion in particular because they’re socially liberal in general. Support for abortion is not an anomalous position in an otherwise conservative outlook.
ii) Also, the fact that Lee doesn’t think abortion is the #1 issue facing our country right now is not much of a justification for his alternative if Lee allows someone of Andrew Sullivan’s ilk to do his thinking for him on other, more “important” issues.
In sum, Lee has failed to show that prolife opponents of Obama are being inconsistent. And even if they were, that’s a purely ad hominem objection.
Given a choice, I still prefer a “hypocrite” who does good to an ideological purist who does evil.
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Significance Of Origen
Origen was one of the most influential Christians of the patristic age, but also one of the most controversial. Because of the beliefs he held, Origen is both commended and criticized by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants.
Though some of the criticism of Origen is warranted, what I want to do in this post is address the tendency of some to be overly dismissive of him. Because of his mixed doctrinal character and the mixed reaction to him by Christians, Origen is problematic for some of the historical claims of high churchmen. When Evangelicals cite his contradictions of Roman Catholic belief, for example, often the Catholic response is to dismiss Origen as a heretic or as a marginal figure in church history. Much the same occurs among some Evangelicals, such as King James Onlyists. To those who don't know much about Origen, such dismissals may seem reasonable, but they aren't.
Origen was born into a Christian home late in the second century, and he lived until the middle of the third century. Although he eventually became controversial in some Christian circles during his lifetime, partly for some of his theological views, he began his Christian life in the mainstream, he was part of the clergy of the Caesarean church, and many Christians continued to think highly of him in spite of the criticisms of others. Despite opposition to Origen in Alexandria and Rome, for example, other Christians in those cities, such as Hippolytus in Rome and Dionysius in Alexandria, were more supportive (John McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook To Origen [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004], pp. 8, 22). He became controversial, but he remained in fellowship with the Christian mainstream throughout his life.
Despite Origen's errors, no Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant should deny that he was right on most issues and that he did much good. Regarding one of Origen's most significant works, his treatise Against Celsus, Henry Chadwick wrote:
"In the contra Celsum Origen does not merely vindicate the character of Jesus and the credibility of the Christian tradition; he also shows that Christians can be so far from being irrational and credulous illiterates such as Celsus thinks them to be that they may know more about Greek philosophy than the pagan Celsus himself, and can make intelligent use of it to interpret the doctrines of the Church. In the range of his learning he towers above his pagan adversary, handling the traditional arguments of Academy and Stoa with masterly ease and fluency." (Origen: Contra Celsum [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003], p. xii)
Anybody who professes to be a Christian should be grateful for much of Origen's life and what he accomplished. Who could read Eusebius' account of Origen's childhood and adolescence or his account of the closing years of Origen's life, for example, without being moved?
Below are some of the comments of the Eastern Orthodox patristic scholar John McGuckin concerning the life and significance of Origen. The work from which I'm quoting has many contributors from a wide variety of theological backgrounds. Comments similar to McGuckin's have been made by many other scholars. I don't agree with all of McGuckin's conclusions, but I'm quoting some of his highest comments about Origen to illustrate the misleading nature of the dismissive approach taken toward Origen by some.
Though some of the criticism of Origen is warranted, what I want to do in this post is address the tendency of some to be overly dismissive of him. Because of his mixed doctrinal character and the mixed reaction to him by Christians, Origen is problematic for some of the historical claims of high churchmen. When Evangelicals cite his contradictions of Roman Catholic belief, for example, often the Catholic response is to dismiss Origen as a heretic or as a marginal figure in church history. Much the same occurs among some Evangelicals, such as King James Onlyists. To those who don't know much about Origen, such dismissals may seem reasonable, but they aren't.
Origen was born into a Christian home late in the second century, and he lived until the middle of the third century. Although he eventually became controversial in some Christian circles during his lifetime, partly for some of his theological views, he began his Christian life in the mainstream, he was part of the clergy of the Caesarean church, and many Christians continued to think highly of him in spite of the criticisms of others. Despite opposition to Origen in Alexandria and Rome, for example, other Christians in those cities, such as Hippolytus in Rome and Dionysius in Alexandria, were more supportive (John McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook To Origen [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004], pp. 8, 22). He became controversial, but he remained in fellowship with the Christian mainstream throughout his life.
Despite Origen's errors, no Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant should deny that he was right on most issues and that he did much good. Regarding one of Origen's most significant works, his treatise Against Celsus, Henry Chadwick wrote:
"In the contra Celsum Origen does not merely vindicate the character of Jesus and the credibility of the Christian tradition; he also shows that Christians can be so far from being irrational and credulous illiterates such as Celsus thinks them to be that they may know more about Greek philosophy than the pagan Celsus himself, and can make intelligent use of it to interpret the doctrines of the Church. In the range of his learning he towers above his pagan adversary, handling the traditional arguments of Academy and Stoa with masterly ease and fluency." (Origen: Contra Celsum [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003], p. xii)
Anybody who professes to be a Christian should be grateful for much of Origen's life and what he accomplished. Who could read Eusebius' account of Origen's childhood and adolescence or his account of the closing years of Origen's life, for example, without being moved?
Below are some of the comments of the Eastern Orthodox patristic scholar John McGuckin concerning the life and significance of Origen. The work from which I'm quoting has many contributors from a wide variety of theological backgrounds. Comments similar to McGuckin's have been made by many other scholars. I don't agree with all of McGuckin's conclusions, but I'm quoting some of his highest comments about Origen to illustrate the misleading nature of the dismissive approach taken toward Origen by some.
Jerome once described [Origen] as clearly the most important Christian thinker since the generation of the apostles....
He was, after all, the Christian church's first and greatest biblical scholar....
Thomas Merton put his finger on it when he tried to describe Origen's life, character, and impact in his poem "Origen." "His sin was to speak first among mutes," he said, describing Origen's effect on later ages as akin to that of a "mad lighthouse," emitting incessant pulses of illumination, setting a compass point for the whole West.
In his own lifetime Origen had many passionate defenders, students, and patrons (see Disciples of Origen) as well as many hostile critics. No age of the church has seemed to be different in this regard....he always kept a body of Christian admirers who were themselves powerful voices in the formation of Christian theology in their own generations....
More times than one can tell, his reflection on an issue was massively influential on the later course of Christian theology (although in the West, after the sixth century, Augustine's influence came to predominate)....
Origen's father, Leonides, a marked man, was first imprisoned, then beheaded. The impact on his family was devastating financially as well as emotionally, for the whole patrimony of those executed was confiscated to the treasury. As Origen was the eldest of seven sons, the support of the family fell onto his shoulders. His first instinct had been to run to join his father in prison and profess his faith, but he was prevented by his mother. Despite his eagerness for the honor of martyrdom, he was denied it by the very law that put his students of the higher classes to death. Even at the end, the witness of martyrdom would elude him. He would be severely tortured in his old age but would also outlive the persecutor Decius; so he was technically a confessor but not a martyr.
The posthumous lack of the title [of martyr], more than anything else, left his reputation vulnerable to revisionists of later centuries....
When he was eighteen Origen was appointed to the task of giving catechetical direction for the Alexandrian church....
Other visits [of Origen outside of Alexandria], according to Eusebius's chronology of events, took place in this same period and also bear witness to his growing international fame as a teacher. According to Eusebius, the Roman governor of Arabia sent letters to the prefect of Egypt asking him to send on Origen, accompanied by official bodyguards, so that he could hear more of the Christian movement from one of its leading intellectuals....
His eventual transfer to the permanent staff of the church at Caesarea is synonymous with the church of that city establishing its own library archive, with Origen presiding over it as collector-archivist, priest and professor....
As a priest-theologian in Caesarea, Origen's fame and importance rose in an unbroken curve, despite any of Rome's or Alexandria's misgivings as to his orthodoxy. The hierarchs of his province trusted him entirely as an arbiter of orthodoxy....He was also taken with the hierarchs to the local councils of the Palestinian region....
Origen was a marked man. He had evaded previous persecutions by hiding in the houses of the faithful. This time [in the persecution under Decius around the middle of the third century] he was deliberately sought out as the leading Christian intellectual of the age and was arrested. His treatment was specially designed to bring him to a public recantation of the faith. To this end he was tortured with special care, so that he would not die under the stress of his pain. He was chained, set in the infamous iron collar, and stretched on the rack - four spaces, no less, as Eusebius tells his readers, who knew exactly what degree of pain that involved, and how many dislocations of bones and ripping of sinews it brought with it....
The four spaces refers to the ratchet divisions of the Roman torturer's racking machine, and is a near fatal amount that leaves the victim permanently crippled, if not paralyzed....
He was saved time after time, only because the governor of Caesarea had commanded he should not die under the torture before he had publicly denied the faith. This was why he suffered throughout the two years of persecution and was liberated only by the death of the persecutor, Decius, assassinated with his children in 252 after a blessedly short time as emperor. Origen's health had been broken by his ordeals, however. He was by the standards of his age an extremely old man already at sixty-nine, and died from the accumulated sufferings of his imprisonment shortly afterward. That he died as a confessor, not as a martyr under the rack, was one reason for the loss of much of his work in later centuries, when he was censured for unorthodox opinions....
Eusebius gives us to understand that Origen in his last year of life, broken in health, spent his time dictating letters of encouragement to those who had also suffered for the cause of Christ: "After these things Origen left many words of comfort, full of sweetness, to those who needed assistance, as can be seen abundantly and most truly from so many of his epistles."...
Jerome tells us that Origen was buried (and so presumably was also resident at the time of his death) in the Palestinian city of Tyre. This gave rise to an abundance of later medieval tales of his tomb being held in special honor in the Crusader cathedral of Tyre, walled in the back of the high altar. The Crusader stories demonstrate only how his memory remained high in the hearts and minds of Christians of all generations, despite his official censure by subsequent church authorities....[Origen was] one of the greatest, yet most self-effacing, men of his epoch....
So it is that the greatest Christian of his age passes out of our notice quietly and without fuss. Even from his deathbed he was concerned to console those who had been scarred, both psychologically and physically, by the time of torture. His heart's desire, even in this excruciating posttraumatic context, was to offer "sweet words of consolation" to the faithful who were grieving after surviving the latest cruel tyranny against them....
Precisely because his legacy lived on, as undoubtedly the greatest genius the early church ever produced, and because his memory and teachings were revered by generations of later Christian thinkers (especially the monks who loved him as one of the first Christian ascetics and mystics), his reputation became something the church had to control and correct. Thus it was that after several "Origenistic controversies" agitating the church from the fourth through the sixth centuries, the Emperor Justinian moved against him with a decree in 543 to proscribe and burn his books. This damning of his memory in the sixth century is largely responsible for the great damage that has occurred to his received canon of works. The hostile judgment of the Fifth Ecumenical Council - even if the canonical condemnation of him by name is not authentic to the acts of that synod - certainly weighed against him overall, as did the Gelasian Decretal in the West, which put his works on a list of banned authors. That even so there remains so much is an extraordinary testimony to the love the church retained for this irrepressible genius, even after an imperial and synodical verdict of posthumous condemnation. Of course, all of the greatest thinkers of the patristic age were in his debt, and even after his condemnation he was too deeply inserted into the fabric of Christian theologizing ever to be dismissed or forgotten. He had been the founding architect (as far as its international reception was concerned) of biblical commentary as a mode of organizing Christian reflection, and no one who took the Bible seriously in the first millennium of the church was able to avoid his groundbreaking writing....
Jerome says that Eusebius listed just under 2,000 treatises as the sum of Origen's lifework....
[He was] the greatest writer of Christian antiquity...
Origen's elaboration of a hermeneutic using the allegorical method, advanced in these commentaries, both established him as the Christian world's greatest exegete and formed the foundational architecture of Christian interpretation of the scriptures....
Origen in his old age composed a commentary on Matthew in twenty-five volumes. By this monumental work, destined to remain a classic for all later generations (even after he was condemned, the main ideas of his commentary made their way into more or less all other commentators of the Christian tradition), Origen established Matthew as the primary canonical Gospel of the Christian tradition....
Almost all Christian spiritual and ascetic literature, ever since, has been indebted to Origen's foundational architecture of Christian mysticism [in his commentary on Song of Solomon]....
Nothing like it [Origen's treatise First Principles] had ever been seen before in Christianity, and although many of its sketched-out avenues for development caused more alarm than admiration for many later thinkers, it is nevertheless unarguable that behind all the theological arguments of the next three centuries, it was Origen's agenda in this book (in Trinitarian thought, Christology, anthropology, hermeneutics, eschatology, and ecclesiology) that served as the point of departure....
Origen's general premise in this work [the treatise On Prayer]...was of monumental significance in influencing all later ascetical writings on prayer. In his Commentary on Canticles and in his Treatise on Prayer, Origen can rightly be said to have founded the monumental Christian tradition of spiritual literature that would soon follow. For this reason, although not technically a monastic himself (although he was certainly an ascetic Sophist), Origen has also often been seen as a forerunner and theorist of the Christian monastic movement.
(The Westminster Handbook To Origen [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004], pp. ix-xi, 3-4, 8-9, 21-22, n. 123 on p. 22, 22-23, 25-26, 29-31, 37-38)
Sunday, October 26, 2008
The Libertarian Dilemma
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
According to incompatibilism, determinism precludes free will. Libertarians are incompatibilists who also believe in free will. Hence, they’re committed to free will’s requiring the falsity of determinism—indeterminism. The trouble is that the very indeterminism which the libertarians need seem inimical to free will in that it is hard to see how indeterministic events can be under the agent’s control. This, in short, is the so-called Libertarian Dilemma: free will seems incompatible with determinism, but it also seems incompatible with indeterminism—so, free will seems impossible. This book offers an in-depth analysis of this problem and some of the major contemporary attempts by libertarians to forge a successful “way out” of it. In doing so, some central issues in the metaphysics of free will are analyzed in detail, e.g., the logic of contemporary arguments for each of the horns of the dilemma; the problem of locating the libertarians’ requisite indeterminism; the nature of “agent causation” and its prospects for solving the dilemma. This book will be of interest to philosophers or students of philosophy who have an interest in the metaphysics of free will.
Get your copy here.
HT: Hermonta
Halloween
The eagle-eyed Patrick Chan has drawn my attention to some thoughts on Halloween by James Jordan:
http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/open-book/no-28-concerning-halloween/
I think it would be good if churches taught their people the history and theology of Halloween. I don't object to the holiday, per se.
However, children are susceptible to occult bondage. And I think that's more of a danger now than back when I was a kid.
Many churches sponsor Halloween parties for kids. Giving them a safe venue. And many Halloween costumes are not occultic.
In the pop culture, Halloween has merged with the horror genre. By this I mean that aspect of the horror genre which accentuates, not merely the occult, but blood and gore.
This raises an interesting question. What’s the appeal of the horror genre? In particular, why do a lot of moviegoers like to watch teenagers hunted down and murdered by a psychopathic killer? Wherein lies the attraction?
To some extent, I suppose that some people have an appetite for sadism and perversion. The vicarious and anonymous nature of the film medium allows them to safely indulge their pathological fantasies.
Perhaps, though, there’s also something deeper afoot. Perhaps it’s a projection of the inner fear that there really is something terrifying out there. Something lurking in the shadows.
Even if most of us enjoy the sunnyside of life, there’s the nervous suspicion that ordinary human beings can be monstrous under the surface. That even your friends can’t be trusted. In a survival situation, they’d turn on you. Feed on your.
At a deeper level, people sometimes do horrible things to each other because human beings embody something inhuman. Something extraterritorial, that takes possession. Its very randomness is part of the horror. Everything can be wonderful and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it can take a hideous turn for the worse. It can pounce anywhere at anytime.
Perhaps this reflects the subliminal awareness—which, most of the time, we repress—that we are fallen creatures in a fallen world, and our sin will find us out. We gamble with evil, and sometimes we lose the bet. Sometimes evil comes around to collect its dues.
The devil’s pact has a way of catching up with you. When you’re alone, in the quiet of your conscience, you can hear its footsteps behind you.
Sinners like to live on the edge. To tempt fate. But sometimes our lucky streak runs out. We draw the short stick. Evil takes its pound of flesh, then everything returns to “normal” for a while—until the next attack.
Evil retreats into the shadows, like a carnivore dragging its kill away. The screams grow faint. The hubbub dies down. The birds stop squawking. The squirrels come out of their boroughs. The picnic resumes. We’re lulled back into business as usual until evil strikes again, snatching away another one of our comrades.
It sees, but cannot be seen; slays, but cannot be slain. Sometimes it’s an ambush predator, well camouflaged. But at other times it will pursue its prey. Whatever it takes.
Not only is it random, but relentless. Once it marks the victim for death, there’s no escape. Even if you stay alert and double-bolt your doors, it will come for you. It will find you. It will not be deterred or denied.
No one is more vulnerable than a sinner. Only the forbearance or forgiveness of God stands between us and some unspeakable horror.
I think that, ultimately, slasher films are a secular version of divine retribution. They symbolize and objectify the subconscious dread of the unbeliever. It’s something he tries to suppress, tries to forget, but in the process he merely displaces his fear. Judgment is waiting. Sharpening its knives. All of us are living on borrowed time. Only Jesus can redeem our debts.
http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/open-book/no-28-concerning-halloween/
I think it would be good if churches taught their people the history and theology of Halloween. I don't object to the holiday, per se.
However, children are susceptible to occult bondage. And I think that's more of a danger now than back when I was a kid.
Many churches sponsor Halloween parties for kids. Giving them a safe venue. And many Halloween costumes are not occultic.
In the pop culture, Halloween has merged with the horror genre. By this I mean that aspect of the horror genre which accentuates, not merely the occult, but blood and gore.
This raises an interesting question. What’s the appeal of the horror genre? In particular, why do a lot of moviegoers like to watch teenagers hunted down and murdered by a psychopathic killer? Wherein lies the attraction?
To some extent, I suppose that some people have an appetite for sadism and perversion. The vicarious and anonymous nature of the film medium allows them to safely indulge their pathological fantasies.
Perhaps, though, there’s also something deeper afoot. Perhaps it’s a projection of the inner fear that there really is something terrifying out there. Something lurking in the shadows.
Even if most of us enjoy the sunnyside of life, there’s the nervous suspicion that ordinary human beings can be monstrous under the surface. That even your friends can’t be trusted. In a survival situation, they’d turn on you. Feed on your.
At a deeper level, people sometimes do horrible things to each other because human beings embody something inhuman. Something extraterritorial, that takes possession. Its very randomness is part of the horror. Everything can be wonderful and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it can take a hideous turn for the worse. It can pounce anywhere at anytime.
Perhaps this reflects the subliminal awareness—which, most of the time, we repress—that we are fallen creatures in a fallen world, and our sin will find us out. We gamble with evil, and sometimes we lose the bet. Sometimes evil comes around to collect its dues.
The devil’s pact has a way of catching up with you. When you’re alone, in the quiet of your conscience, you can hear its footsteps behind you.
Sinners like to live on the edge. To tempt fate. But sometimes our lucky streak runs out. We draw the short stick. Evil takes its pound of flesh, then everything returns to “normal” for a while—until the next attack.
Evil retreats into the shadows, like a carnivore dragging its kill away. The screams grow faint. The hubbub dies down. The birds stop squawking. The squirrels come out of their boroughs. The picnic resumes. We’re lulled back into business as usual until evil strikes again, snatching away another one of our comrades.
It sees, but cannot be seen; slays, but cannot be slain. Sometimes it’s an ambush predator, well camouflaged. But at other times it will pursue its prey. Whatever it takes.
Not only is it random, but relentless. Once it marks the victim for death, there’s no escape. Even if you stay alert and double-bolt your doors, it will come for you. It will find you. It will not be deterred or denied.
No one is more vulnerable than a sinner. Only the forbearance or forgiveness of God stands between us and some unspeakable horror.
I think that, ultimately, slasher films are a secular version of divine retribution. They symbolize and objectify the subconscious dread of the unbeliever. It’s something he tries to suppress, tries to forget, but in the process he merely displaces his fear. Judgment is waiting. Sharpening its knives. All of us are living on borrowed time. Only Jesus can redeem our debts.
Darlene Deibler Rose
What a story. What a woman. And what a glory to the Lord!
In the late 1930s, Darlene Deibler was a young, newly married missionary to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). However, when the Japanese invaded and took over, Westerners were imprisoned (à la Empire of the Sun), Darlene was separated from her husband, and the two were never to see one other again.
Here's her story:
And here's the more detailed account of the childhood hymn Darlene heard while imprisoned:
Other books along the same lines are Ernest Gordon's To End All Wars, which has been turned into a movie, and Esther Kim's If I Perish.
Finally, here's Darlene in her own words:
In the late 1930s, Darlene Deibler was a young, newly married missionary to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). However, when the Japanese invaded and took over, Westerners were imprisoned (à la Empire of the Sun), Darlene was separated from her husband, and the two were never to see one other again.
Here's her story:
The beatings, the starvation and the solitary confinement never broke her.(From the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Monday, November 19, 2001.)
"I never cried in front of them," said Darlene Deibler Rose of her Japanese captors in World War II. "But as soon as everyone went away, I cried buckets."
Mrs. Rose, 84, who moved to Chattanooga this year with her husband, Jerry, served as a missionary in New Guinea. She was there with the Christian Missionary Alliance from 1938 to 1942, and again after the war in what is now Papua New Guinea, from 1949 to 1978.
In between, she was imprisoned for three years on the island of Celebes, now Sulawesi.
In 1988, she told the story of her captivity in the book Evidence Not Seen.
[...]
Mission work was close to the heart of then-Mrs. Deibler when she arrived in what was called the Dutch East Indies on her first wedding anniversary, Aug. 18, 1938. Her husband, the Rev. C. Russell Deibler, already had served in New Guinea, and his wife had wanted to be a missionary since she was a child.
Their time with the people of New Guinea was happy and satisfying until March 1942, Mrs. Rose said, when the Imperial Japanese Army arrived on the island and made them prisoners. Eventually, the young couple was separated, never to see each other again.
Over the next three years, Mrs. Rose was confined to various camps and eventually held in solitary confinement when the Kempetai, the Japanese secret police, learned she was American, she said.
Her year of confinement in a one-room building with high, barred windows was the most trying, she said, but she found ways to bear it.
"The Lord had laid it on my heart to memorize Scripture," Mrs. Rose said, "and I knew I needed exercise, so I would walk around the room quietly saying Scripture and singing hymns."
On a particularly low day, she said, she heard a hymn from her childhood being sung outside her window. She shimmied up a pipe in her cell and held onto the bars of the window until the song stopped.
"I still don't know what it was," Mrs. Rose said, "but I got on my knees and told God, 'It's all right that I'm here.'" [See below for a more detailed account.]
She had to eat her small daily dish of rice without utensils, she said, and she lost so much weight she was no more than "skin and bones." When it was possible, Mrs. Rose said, the students in the Bible school where she had taught would add things to her rice to give her protein. They secured jobs near her in an effort to help.
"One day there was a nice, long worm in there," she said. "I just said, 'OK, Lord, here goes.'"
Mrs. Rose was once given 92 small bananas, surreptitiously furnished by one of her captors, whom she knew only as Mr. Yamaji and whom she had led to Christ, she said.
"I didn't eat them all at once," she said, "and didn't eat the last one until the day we were freed."
The two dresses she was allowed to take into captivity never wore out, despite their constant use, Mrs. Rose said. And she had to use them in other ways, she said, such as to remove the blood of mosquitoes she had killed on the cell walls. Her captors saw the blood, told her to remove it and ordered her not to kill any more mosquitoes.
Eventually, she contracted malaria, dysentery and beriberi -- all at the same time, she said. Through it all, including beatings that caused her permanently to lose her hair, Mrs. Rose said she was retained her faith.
"I have no regrets," she said. "It was a way to know God in a deeper way. He was always there."
Neither does she hold any animosity for her captors. She believes many of them had remorse, even when they were beating her.
"I don't hate the Japanese," she said. "With Mr. Yamaji, I could see it in him. I could see his tears."
When Mrs. Rose was freed by the Japanese, she was told of her husband's death, but learned he had led many others to a knowledge of Christ while in captivity. With that knowledge and her love of the native New Guinea people, she eventually decided to return to the islands.
When she did, it was with second husband Jerry Rose, who, like her first husband, felt a calling to serve the country. There they taught, preached, dispensed medicine, delivered babies, graded an airstrip and did whatever else they saw as necessary to serve.
"Fools rush in where others dare not go," Mr. Rose said. "Through it all, though, we were very conscious of the prayers back home."
And here's the more detailed account of the childhood hymn Darlene heard while imprisoned:
"The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe." (Proverbs 18:10)If you'd like more more information about Darlene Deibler Rose, you'll want to make sure to check out her website. Also, Pastor John Dubler has written a biography, which includes a couple of photos. And, of course, there's her book, Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II.
There is nothing that will plunge a person into despair more quickly than to suppose what could happen. This was another example of the worries of tomorrow that never come, robbing us of the joys of today. Poignant sadness, overwhelming me for the hurt of others, released the tears from my own widowhood. I was alone and I had time to weep, but with the tears came healing. In my moment of terrible aloneness and sorrow for a world of people so devastated by war, I heard someone with a beautiful, clear voice singing "Precious Name, Oh, How Sweet" outside my cell, but he was singing in Indonesian: "Precious is Your name, a shelter that is secure!" My heart burst with bright hope! The "time to weep" was past; it was a "time to laugh."
"O Lord," I cried, "forgive me. It isn't a game of 'suppose.' I live in the sure knowledge that 'the name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.' The name of Jesus, Your precious name, is my strong tower of defense against the enemy of despair. It is my shelter that is secure; I enter in and am safe."
But who was the singer? How could he know I needed that song at that moment? Of course he couldn't know, but he loved God, that is sure. I had to see him.
I scrambled up to the transom. My eyes probed the late afternoon light -- no one by my door, no one in the courtyard other than the guard and night watchman. They were talking, and I knew they were totally unaware of the singing! Listening to this hymn of hope and assurance coming from I knew not where, great awe filled my heart. Quietly I slipped to the floor and bathed my soul in the presence of my God.
Other books along the same lines are Ernest Gordon's To End All Wars, which has been turned into a movie, and Esther Kim's If I Perish.
Finally, here's Darlene in her own words:
The Historical Roots Of The Reformation And Evangelicalism
(An updated version of this post, with links to more articles, can be found here.)
“In fact, recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and to say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity. That generalization applies particularly to Luther and to some of the Anglican reformers, somewhat less to Calvin, still less to Zwingli, least of all to the Anabaptists. But even Zwingli, who occupies the left wing among the classical reformers, retained a surprising amount of catholic substance in his thought, while the breadth and depth of Calvin’s debt to the heritage of the catholic centuries is only now beginning to emerge….There was more to quote [from the church fathers] than their [the reformers’] Roman opponents found comfortable. Every major tenet of the Reformation had considerable support in the catholic tradition. That was eminently true of the central Reformation teaching of justification by faith alone….That the ground of our salvation is the unearned favor of God in Christ, and that all we need do to obtain it is to trust that favor – this was the confession of great catholic saints and teachers….Rome’s reactions [to the Protestant reformers] were the doctrinal decrees of the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism based upon those decrees. In these decrees, the Council of Trent selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works, which was only one of the doctrines of justification in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers. When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone – a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers – Rome reacted by canonizing one trend in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted also (justification by faith alone), now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned part of its own catholic tradition….Interpreters of the New Testament have suggested a host of meanings for the passage [Matthew 16]. As Roman Catholic scholars now concede, the ancient Christian father Cyprian used it to prove the authority of the bishop – not merely of the Roman bishop, but of every bishop….So traumatic was the effect of the dogma of papal infallibility that the pope did not avail himself of this privilege for eighty years. But when he finally did, by proclaiming the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on November 1, 1950, he confirmed the suspicions and misgivings of the dogma’s critics. Not only is Scriptural proof obviously lacking for this notion, but the tradition of the early Christian centuries is also silent about it….In asserting their catholicity, the reformers drew upon the church fathers as proof that it was possible to be catholic without being Roman. Study of the fathers thus became an important part of the Protestant panoply as well. In fact, the very word ‘patrology’ as a title for a manual on the church fathers and their works is a Protestant invention, first used by Johann Gerhard (d. 1637). When Protestant liberalism developed during the nineteenth century, one of its principal contributions to theological literature was its work on the fathers. The Patrology of the Roman Catholic scholar Johannes Quasten and an essay by the Jesuit scholar J. de Ghellinck both reveal the dependence even of Roman theologians upon the scholarly achievements of Protestant historians, the outstanding of whom was Adolf Harnack (d. 1930). Although the generation of theologians after Harnack has not been as interested in the field of patristic study, Protestants have not completely forgotten the heritage of the fathers. Meanwhile, Roman Catholics have begun to put an assessment upon the fathers that differs significantly from the traditional one. Instead of measuring the fathers against the standards of a later orthodoxy, Roman Catholic historians now interpret them in the context of their own time. This means, for example, that a church father like Origen is no longer interpreted on the basis of his later (and politically motivated) condemnation for heresy, but on the basis of his own writings and career….The study of the church fathers is now a predominantly Roman Catholic building, even though many of the foundations for it were laid by Protestant hands….the heritage of the fathers does not belong exclusively to either side. Roman Catholics must acknowledge the presence of evangelical or ‘Protestant’ ideas in Irenaeus, and Protestants must come to terms with the catholic elements in the same father.” (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle Of Roman Catholicism [Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1959], pp. 46-49, 51-52, 78, 83, 195-196)
The Papacy (Part 1)
The Papacy (Part 2)
The Episcopate
Apostolic Succession
Infant Baptism (Part 1)
Infant Baptism (Part 2)
The Eucharist
Justification
The Sinlessness Of Mary (Part 1)
The Sinlessness Of Mary (Part 2)
The Assumption Of Mary (Part 1)
The Assumption Of Mary (Part 2)
The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary
The Woman Of Revelation 12
Other Marian Beliefs
Purgatory
The Veneration Of Images
Prayers To The Dead
The Apocrypha
Eschatology
Sources Of The Patristic Era Other Than The Church Fathers
Sola Scriptura
Church Infallibility
Where's Protestantism In Early Church History?
“In fact, recent research on the Reformation entitles us to sharpen it and to say that the Reformation began because the reformers were too catholic in the midst of a church that had forgotten its catholicity. That generalization applies particularly to Luther and to some of the Anglican reformers, somewhat less to Calvin, still less to Zwingli, least of all to the Anabaptists. But even Zwingli, who occupies the left wing among the classical reformers, retained a surprising amount of catholic substance in his thought, while the breadth and depth of Calvin’s debt to the heritage of the catholic centuries is only now beginning to emerge….There was more to quote [from the church fathers] than their [the reformers’] Roman opponents found comfortable. Every major tenet of the Reformation had considerable support in the catholic tradition. That was eminently true of the central Reformation teaching of justification by faith alone….That the ground of our salvation is the unearned favor of God in Christ, and that all we need do to obtain it is to trust that favor – this was the confession of great catholic saints and teachers….Rome’s reactions [to the Protestant reformers] were the doctrinal decrees of the Council of Trent and the Roman Catechism based upon those decrees. In these decrees, the Council of Trent selected and elevated to official status the notion of justification by faith plus works, which was only one of the doctrines of justification in the medieval theologians and ancient fathers. When the reformers attacked this notion in the name of the doctrine of justification by faith alone – a doctrine also attested to by some medieval theologians and ancient fathers – Rome reacted by canonizing one trend in preference to all the others. What had previously been permitted also (justification by faith alone), now became forbidden. In condemning the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent condemned part of its own catholic tradition….Interpreters of the New Testament have suggested a host of meanings for the passage [Matthew 16]. As Roman Catholic scholars now concede, the ancient Christian father Cyprian used it to prove the authority of the bishop – not merely of the Roman bishop, but of every bishop….So traumatic was the effect of the dogma of papal infallibility that the pope did not avail himself of this privilege for eighty years. But when he finally did, by proclaiming the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on November 1, 1950, he confirmed the suspicions and misgivings of the dogma’s critics. Not only is Scriptural proof obviously lacking for this notion, but the tradition of the early Christian centuries is also silent about it….In asserting their catholicity, the reformers drew upon the church fathers as proof that it was possible to be catholic without being Roman. Study of the fathers thus became an important part of the Protestant panoply as well. In fact, the very word ‘patrology’ as a title for a manual on the church fathers and their works is a Protestant invention, first used by Johann Gerhard (d. 1637). When Protestant liberalism developed during the nineteenth century, one of its principal contributions to theological literature was its work on the fathers. The Patrology of the Roman Catholic scholar Johannes Quasten and an essay by the Jesuit scholar J. de Ghellinck both reveal the dependence even of Roman theologians upon the scholarly achievements of Protestant historians, the outstanding of whom was Adolf Harnack (d. 1930). Although the generation of theologians after Harnack has not been as interested in the field of patristic study, Protestants have not completely forgotten the heritage of the fathers. Meanwhile, Roman Catholics have begun to put an assessment upon the fathers that differs significantly from the traditional one. Instead of measuring the fathers against the standards of a later orthodoxy, Roman Catholic historians now interpret them in the context of their own time. This means, for example, that a church father like Origen is no longer interpreted on the basis of his later (and politically motivated) condemnation for heresy, but on the basis of his own writings and career….The study of the church fathers is now a predominantly Roman Catholic building, even though many of the foundations for it were laid by Protestant hands….the heritage of the fathers does not belong exclusively to either side. Roman Catholics must acknowledge the presence of evangelical or ‘Protestant’ ideas in Irenaeus, and Protestants must come to terms with the catholic elements in the same father.” (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle Of Roman Catholicism [Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1959], pp. 46-49, 51-52, 78, 83, 195-196)
The Papacy (Part 1)
The Papacy (Part 2)
The Episcopate
Apostolic Succession
Infant Baptism (Part 1)
Infant Baptism (Part 2)
The Eucharist
Justification
The Sinlessness Of Mary (Part 1)
The Sinlessness Of Mary (Part 2)
The Assumption Of Mary (Part 1)
The Assumption Of Mary (Part 2)
The Perpetual Virginity Of Mary
The Woman Of Revelation 12
Other Marian Beliefs
Purgatory
The Veneration Of Images
Prayers To The Dead
The Apocrypha
Eschatology
Sources Of The Patristic Era Other Than The Church Fathers
Sola Scriptura
Church Infallibility
Where's Protestantism In Early Church History?
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Old Serpent
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made” (Gen 3:1).
“And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world— he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev 12:9).
I’ve discussed the identity of the Serpent in Gen 3 on more than one occasion. However, I’m going to be bringing some additional documentation to bear.
To recap, both liberal and conservative Bible scholars tend to be puzzled by how the serpentine figure in Gen 3 evolved into the diabolical figure in Rev 12.
Beyond that, liberals regard Gen 3 as an etiological fable of how the snake lost its legs while conservatives generally interpret the figure in Gen 3 as a case of animal possession.
I think the interpretive problem that a modern reader is apt to have is that he doesn’t understand the cultural code language of the ancient text. Instead, he uses his own cultural markers as his reference point.
But the question we need to ask ourselves is how the ancient Near Eastern audience to whom this text was originally addressed would have heard it. What associations would the depiction of a rational, articulate serpent trigger in their minds?
Let’s turn to a standard reference work:
snake-dragon
The snake-dragon (with horns, snake’s body and neck, lion’s forelegs and bird’s hindlegs) is represented from the Akkadian Period down to the Hellenistic Period as a symbol of various gods or as a generally magically protective hybrid not associated specifically with any deity.
snake gods
The snake gods of ancient Mesopotamia, especially Nirah, seem to be the only fully animalian, non-anthropomorphic, deities (although la-Tarak may have had a leonine face and worn a lion’s skin). The snake god Nirah was worshipped at the city of Der, located on the northern border between Mesopotamia and Elam, as the minister of Istaran, the city god of Der (see local gods). His cult there is attested from the earliest times and was long-lived. He was also worshipped until Middle Babylonian times in the E-kur, the temple of Ellil (Enlil) in Nippur, where he was regarded as a protective deity of the temple and a protective presence. The cult of Irhan, a deity of the city of Ur and probably in origin a god representing the river Euphrates, remained independent until the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, but was later syncretised with the cult of Nirah. It is possible that the snake symbol found on kudurrus [inscribed stones] represents the god Nirah (see snakes).
An anthropomorphic god with the lower body of a snake, shown on cylinder seals of the Old Akkadian Period, may also represent Nirah.
On the cylinder seal of Gudea, prince of Lagas, the ruler is introduced into the presence of a superior deity by a god from each of whose shoulders a horned snake rises. This is probably intended to represent Ningiszida, regarded by Gudea as his personal protective deity (see personal gods).
snakes
Representations of snakes are naturally frequent in iconography from the prehistoric periods onwards, but it is not always easy to decide whether or not they carried any religious value. When depicted as attributes of deities they are seen associated with both gods and goddesses. And independent symbol of the snake appears on kudurrus and is identified by the inscription on one as symbolizing the minister of the god Istaran (and so is possibly Nirah; see snake gods). Snakes continued to be portrayed in religious and secular art in later periods. As a divine symbol in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian art, the snake can be identified from ritual texts directly as the god Nirah.
The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes), a mildly venomous snake native to the Middle East, has a pair of spike-like folds of skin on its head. In art, the form of a snake with a pair of horns rising from the forehead occurs as a symbol on Kassite kudurrus and in Neo-Assyrian art as an element of seal designs and in the form of magically protective figurines…A variant horned snake with forelegs was apparently regarded as a different creature…Originally one of the trophies of Ninurta (see Slain Heroes), it was later—when the snake-dragon became Marduk’s animals—the symbol of various gods formerly associated with the snake-dragon, including Ningiszida.
J. Black & Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (U. of Texas 1997), 166-68.
This reference work concerns itself with Mesopotamia, but, of course, snake-gods and snake cults weren’t limited to Mesopotamia. For example, you can find the same phenomenon in ancient Egypt.
This identification would explain the preternatural powers of the snake in Gen 3. It’s not a snake at all. Rather, it’s a serpentine symbol of a numinous being.
Of course, we need to draw a further distinction. This text was addressed, not merely to an ancient Near Eastern audience, but to a Jewish audience in particular. They wouldn’t view the “snake” in quite the same terms. It would still be a numinous being, but a demonic or diabolical being.
Paganism didn’t really have a distinct category for the demonic. In paganism, all the gods are corrupt and malicious in varying degrees.
Biblical theism has a more complex classification scheme. God is in a class by himself. He is the Creator. And there are good spirits (heavenly angels, saints) as well as evil spirits (fallen angels, damned souls)—all of whom are creatures.
This interpretation has the further advantage that it doesn’t require any historical or theological development from the snake to the devil. The “snake” in Gen 3 was always emblematic of an evil spirit.
Symbolic consistency carries over to the curse (3:14-15). The same serpentine imagery. And, as Walton explains in his commentary, this is not a just-so story of how the snake lost its legs. Rather, it’s a standard imprecation, of the sort often employed for venomous snakes.
“And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world— he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev 12:9).
I’ve discussed the identity of the Serpent in Gen 3 on more than one occasion. However, I’m going to be bringing some additional documentation to bear.
To recap, both liberal and conservative Bible scholars tend to be puzzled by how the serpentine figure in Gen 3 evolved into the diabolical figure in Rev 12.
Beyond that, liberals regard Gen 3 as an etiological fable of how the snake lost its legs while conservatives generally interpret the figure in Gen 3 as a case of animal possession.
I think the interpretive problem that a modern reader is apt to have is that he doesn’t understand the cultural code language of the ancient text. Instead, he uses his own cultural markers as his reference point.
But the question we need to ask ourselves is how the ancient Near Eastern audience to whom this text was originally addressed would have heard it. What associations would the depiction of a rational, articulate serpent trigger in their minds?
Let’s turn to a standard reference work:
snake-dragon
The snake-dragon (with horns, snake’s body and neck, lion’s forelegs and bird’s hindlegs) is represented from the Akkadian Period down to the Hellenistic Period as a symbol of various gods or as a generally magically protective hybrid not associated specifically with any deity.
snake gods
The snake gods of ancient Mesopotamia, especially Nirah, seem to be the only fully animalian, non-anthropomorphic, deities (although la-Tarak may have had a leonine face and worn a lion’s skin). The snake god Nirah was worshipped at the city of Der, located on the northern border between Mesopotamia and Elam, as the minister of Istaran, the city god of Der (see local gods). His cult there is attested from the earliest times and was long-lived. He was also worshipped until Middle Babylonian times in the E-kur, the temple of Ellil (Enlil) in Nippur, where he was regarded as a protective deity of the temple and a protective presence. The cult of Irhan, a deity of the city of Ur and probably in origin a god representing the river Euphrates, remained independent until the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, but was later syncretised with the cult of Nirah. It is possible that the snake symbol found on kudurrus [inscribed stones] represents the god Nirah (see snakes).
An anthropomorphic god with the lower body of a snake, shown on cylinder seals of the Old Akkadian Period, may also represent Nirah.
On the cylinder seal of Gudea, prince of Lagas, the ruler is introduced into the presence of a superior deity by a god from each of whose shoulders a horned snake rises. This is probably intended to represent Ningiszida, regarded by Gudea as his personal protective deity (see personal gods).
snakes
Representations of snakes are naturally frequent in iconography from the prehistoric periods onwards, but it is not always easy to decide whether or not they carried any religious value. When depicted as attributes of deities they are seen associated with both gods and goddesses. And independent symbol of the snake appears on kudurrus and is identified by the inscription on one as symbolizing the minister of the god Istaran (and so is possibly Nirah; see snake gods). Snakes continued to be portrayed in religious and secular art in later periods. As a divine symbol in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian art, the snake can be identified from ritual texts directly as the god Nirah.
The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes), a mildly venomous snake native to the Middle East, has a pair of spike-like folds of skin on its head. In art, the form of a snake with a pair of horns rising from the forehead occurs as a symbol on Kassite kudurrus and in Neo-Assyrian art as an element of seal designs and in the form of magically protective figurines…A variant horned snake with forelegs was apparently regarded as a different creature…Originally one of the trophies of Ninurta (see Slain Heroes), it was later—when the snake-dragon became Marduk’s animals—the symbol of various gods formerly associated with the snake-dragon, including Ningiszida.
J. Black & Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (U. of Texas 1997), 166-68.
This reference work concerns itself with Mesopotamia, but, of course, snake-gods and snake cults weren’t limited to Mesopotamia. For example, you can find the same phenomenon in ancient Egypt.
This identification would explain the preternatural powers of the snake in Gen 3. It’s not a snake at all. Rather, it’s a serpentine symbol of a numinous being.
Of course, we need to draw a further distinction. This text was addressed, not merely to an ancient Near Eastern audience, but to a Jewish audience in particular. They wouldn’t view the “snake” in quite the same terms. It would still be a numinous being, but a demonic or diabolical being.
Paganism didn’t really have a distinct category for the demonic. In paganism, all the gods are corrupt and malicious in varying degrees.
Biblical theism has a more complex classification scheme. God is in a class by himself. He is the Creator. And there are good spirits (heavenly angels, saints) as well as evil spirits (fallen angels, damned souls)—all of whom are creatures.
This interpretation has the further advantage that it doesn’t require any historical or theological development from the snake to the devil. The “snake” in Gen 3 was always emblematic of an evil spirit.
Symbolic consistency carries over to the curse (3:14-15). The same serpentine imagery. And, as Walton explains in his commentary, this is not a just-so story of how the snake lost its legs. Rather, it’s a standard imprecation, of the sort often employed for venomous snakes.
Operation Pro-choice Mop-up
Zach Moore responds and indicates that my responses to him are too wordy. Evident of his narcissism, he apparently think I am writing for him. I am under no illusion that Moore will be persuaded by rational argumentation, and don't think anything I write will have an effect on him, so I don't write for him. My posts are for others. Apparently Moore is concerned with time and how many words are used, yet for his end, he posts a reply that is about 95% smarm and 5% substance. Moreover, Moore clearly wants to avoid the argument and has been relegated to trying to get the discussion to move to such off-topic issues as TAG and who can smarm the best! How that figures into the debate is beyond me.
Anyway, Moore wants it short, so be it:
Z: His harranguing over the so-called "Utopian Principle" is getting tired, so I'll leave that alone
P: But Zach brought this up. It was his justification for he claim that he would like abortions "rare."
Z: His main thrust has been to assert the full humanity of the fetus.
P: A demonstrable lie, as those who have read my posts can attest. My main thrust has been to show Moore that he is wrong in saying that the full humanity of the fetus doesn't matter for his argument to go through. This means his argument goes through with the premise: Fetuses are fully human. I disagree his argument can go through with that premise, and gave arguments as to why. So my argument is that (a) Moore's argument doesn't work if the fetus is fully human, contrary to his protests otherwise; and (b) Moore must argue that the fetus is not "fully human." He's not done so as of yet.
Z: He claims that since my position is that personal sovereignty is without exception, if I were to grant that the fetus is human, my argument fails. As I have already pointed out, I'm happy to do so. As I said, "Even if I were to follow Paul down his rabbit hole and grant that a fetus has the same sovereignty enjoyed by its mother, that only extends to within the fetus' own body. Once removed from its uterine environ, the fetus is free to exercise that sovereignty in whichever direction it likes."
P: It's not a "rabbit hole" when your claim that, "My argument goes through whether the fetus is fully human or not." I just took Moore at his word. Apparently that's not good enough. I know he "pointed out" that Moore-sovereignty "only extends to within the fetuses own body." I know all of that. I rebutted that in my last post. I specifically showed how this very claim of Moore's works against Moore. So, rather than advance the discussion, Moore repeats himself. Funny for a guy concerned with word count.
Z: Paul doesn't like my definition of sovereignty.
P: Well, that's true, but irrelevant. The honest communicator would let his readers know that I gave actual arguments as to why I think your view of sovereignty false.
Z: But he also appears to not understand it. For whatever reason, he thinks that I'm talking about a 'right' to 'not have bad things happen to my body.' This is not the case. I'll repeat it again: it is the right to decide what things stay in one's body and what things stay out.
P: Right, and this is specifically what I rebutted in my post. I even quoted you verbatim making this exact same claim and gave reasons to suppose it false. Moore’s not advancing an argument anymore. He apparently thinks that the "THUS SAITH MOORE!!" counts as an authoritative word that I must submit to.
Z: I'd appreciate it if Paul actually used my premises, rather than just claim to use them. Thus, all his counterexamples fall apart like an unimplanted blastocyst.
P: I actually did, as anyone who reads my post can tell. And, notice all Moore does here is to assert that I haven't actually used his premises. Moore can't actually engage my argument, but he still had to save face in front of his loyal reader.
See, that's why my post was so long, because of how much I directly quoted you.
Z: don't know if anyone else thinks it's a shame that Paul didn't provide us with the "scientific" argument for the full humanity of the fetus, especially since it's apparently one of the easiest arguments to make.
P: It is easy, but also irrelevant to the specific argument I'm making. Funny, I made this point and explained it my last post. If Moore read it, he should've noted my explanation. But apparently he's big on people reading his post, not so much on reading other's.
Z: And even more especially since his entire argument rests on the humanity of the fetus, while mine does not.
P: Another demonstrable lie. My entire argument with you does not depend on me proving the full humanity of the fetus. That was granted by you. As was obvious to any who read my post, I covered this point in some detail. I'm offering a reductio. An internal critique. See, the beauty of an internal critique is that you don't have to prove any of your premises since all the premises you use are ones granted by your opponent.
Anyway, Moore wants it short, so be it:
Z: His harranguing over the so-called "Utopian Principle" is getting tired, so I'll leave that alone
P: But Zach brought this up. It was his justification for he claim that he would like abortions "rare."
Z: His main thrust has been to assert the full humanity of the fetus.
P: A demonstrable lie, as those who have read my posts can attest. My main thrust has been to show Moore that he is wrong in saying that the full humanity of the fetus doesn't matter for his argument to go through. This means his argument goes through with the premise: Fetuses are fully human. I disagree his argument can go through with that premise, and gave arguments as to why. So my argument is that (a) Moore's argument doesn't work if the fetus is fully human, contrary to his protests otherwise; and (b) Moore must argue that the fetus is not "fully human." He's not done so as of yet.
Z: He claims that since my position is that personal sovereignty is without exception, if I were to grant that the fetus is human, my argument fails. As I have already pointed out, I'm happy to do so. As I said, "Even if I were to follow Paul down his rabbit hole and grant that a fetus has the same sovereignty enjoyed by its mother, that only extends to within the fetus' own body. Once removed from its uterine environ, the fetus is free to exercise that sovereignty in whichever direction it likes."
P: It's not a "rabbit hole" when your claim that, "My argument goes through whether the fetus is fully human or not." I just took Moore at his word. Apparently that's not good enough. I know he "pointed out" that Moore-sovereignty "only extends to within the fetuses own body." I know all of that. I rebutted that in my last post. I specifically showed how this very claim of Moore's works against Moore. So, rather than advance the discussion, Moore repeats himself. Funny for a guy concerned with word count.
Z: Paul doesn't like my definition of sovereignty.
P: Well, that's true, but irrelevant. The honest communicator would let his readers know that I gave actual arguments as to why I think your view of sovereignty false.
Z: But he also appears to not understand it. For whatever reason, he thinks that I'm talking about a 'right' to 'not have bad things happen to my body.' This is not the case. I'll repeat it again: it is the right to decide what things stay in one's body and what things stay out.
P: Right, and this is specifically what I rebutted in my post. I even quoted you verbatim making this exact same claim and gave reasons to suppose it false. Moore’s not advancing an argument anymore. He apparently thinks that the "THUS SAITH MOORE!!" counts as an authoritative word that I must submit to.
Z: I'd appreciate it if Paul actually used my premises, rather than just claim to use them. Thus, all his counterexamples fall apart like an unimplanted blastocyst.
P: I actually did, as anyone who reads my post can tell. And, notice all Moore does here is to assert that I haven't actually used his premises. Moore can't actually engage my argument, but he still had to save face in front of his loyal reader.
See, that's why my post was so long, because of how much I directly quoted you.
Z: don't know if anyone else thinks it's a shame that Paul didn't provide us with the "scientific" argument for the full humanity of the fetus, especially since it's apparently one of the easiest arguments to make.
P: It is easy, but also irrelevant to the specific argument I'm making. Funny, I made this point and explained it my last post. If Moore read it, he should've noted my explanation. But apparently he's big on people reading his post, not so much on reading other's.
Z: And even more especially since his entire argument rests on the humanity of the fetus, while mine does not.
P: Another demonstrable lie. My entire argument with you does not depend on me proving the full humanity of the fetus. That was granted by you. As was obvious to any who read my post, I covered this point in some detail. I'm offering a reductio. An internal critique. See, the beauty of an internal critique is that you don't have to prove any of your premises since all the premises you use are ones granted by your opponent.
Tinfoil Truthers
DPW SAID:
“When Condi Rice stands before a press conference and says no one ever imagined terrorists would fly a hijacked plane into a building, and then it comes out that the government had war games simulating just such a scenario, Condi was lying.”
How is that statement evidence that Condi was lying?
i) For one thing, Condi was head of the NSA, not the DOD. Why assume that she’s cognizant of everything that goes on over at the Pentagon? It’s a big place. Even the Secretary of Defense isn’t cognizant of everything that goes on under his own roof.
ii) It’s also possible to forget something you used to know.
iii) But let’s assume that she was lying. How does that constitute evidence that 9/11 was an inside job?
What motive would she have to lie? What’s the context of her statement? She’s on the defensive. She was head of the NSA, as well as Bush’s National Security Advisor. Why didn’t she see it coming? Why didn’t she connect the dots?
Like many incompetent bureaucrats, she tells a lie to excuse her incompetence. To minimize blame for her failure to anticipate 9/11.
Isn’t that a simpler, more plausible explanation than a conspiracy theory involving countless conspirators both inside and outside of gov’t?
“When George Bush says(not once but twice), he saw the first plane fly into Tower 1 before he spoke to the children at Booker T. Washington Elementary, and it turns out that there was no videotape available then or live television coverage of the first plane, George was lying, or so monstrously confused he should submit to random drug testing, or at least provide us a copy of the script he's been reading from.”
What’s the point that DPW is trying to make? Is this supposed to be evidence that Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11?
If so, then the inference is obviously fallacious. When did Bush make this statement? Three months after 9/11.
How would a statement made three months after 9/11 be evidence of advance knowledge? The statement would only be evidence of advance knowledge if it was made before the fact. Before Bush was in a position to know what happened—unless he was in on the plot.
DPW is confusing the timing of the statement with the timing of the event. Even if the statement is anachronistic, it was made after the fact, long after Bush had seen footage of the planes hitting the towers.
The fact that Bush’s later statement about the sequence of events may be wrong is irrelevant to what he knew on 9/11. It’s only relevant to what he knew (or thought he knew) at the time he said it. The timing of a statement, and a statement about timing, are two different things. This is pretty elementary.
Why not assume that Bush misremembered the sequence? It’s very easy for subsequent information (or misinformation) to merge with our prior recollection and subconsciously change our recollection of events.
In fact, here’s a textbook example: Many Bush-haters think they remember Bush say that we needed to invade Iraq because it posed an “imminent threat.”
Of course, Bush never said that. In his State of the Union speech, he went out of his way to say the very opposite.
That was a memorable speech. Unlike the average State of the Union speech, there was exceptional public interest in this speech. And that’s because this was shortly after 9/11. Everyone was expecting Bush to use the occasion to say how the US was going to retaliate.
So how could so many people forget such a memorable speech?
And even if they did forget, it would be easy for them to refresh their faulty or fading memory. The text of the speech is posted at the White House website. And if you don’t trust the White House website, there are many other places on the web where you can pull up a transcript.
Yet despite all that, there’s a persistent urban legend that Bush lied us into war by claiming that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US.
People think they remember what he said at the time they heard it live. But they don’t. What they really remember is subsequent coverage of the speech, which they subconsciously merge with their original recollection.
If they can misremember, why can’t Bush?
“Government bureaucrats should be assumed to be lying unless proven otherwise, not the reverse.”
By that logic, we should assume that official critics of the Bush administration like Michael Scheuer and Richard Clarke are lying unless proven otherwise.
“It seems as though no matter how many deceptions elements within the US government orchestrate, from the creation of the Federal Reserve, to the Lusitania, to the USS Kearney, to Pearl Harbor, to Operation Northwoods, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to the USS Liberty, to 9/11, ever the gullible rise up to believe the 'patriotic' lie.”
Let’s run through these items, shall we?
Lusitania
How is this evidence that American bureaucrats deceive people?
Pearl Harbor/USS Liberty/USS Kearny/Gulf of Tonkin
DPW is pyramiding. Using one conspiracy theory to prop up another conspiracy theory. All of his examples are disputed examples.
Operation Nothrwoods
i) That plan was produced at the height of the Cold War, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That emotional climate didn’t exist in the 8 months before 9/11, when Bush took office.
ii) Despite Cold War tension, Operation Northwoods was never adopted or implemented. How does the fact that Operation Northwoods was rejected by gov’t bureaucrats prove what gov’t bureaucrats are prepared to do?
iii) This was also before we developed such an adversarial press corps. Before Watergate. Before the anti-war movement. A president could get away with more back then (e.g. JFK’s poor health and sex life).
iv) Finally, is Operation Northwoods even analogous to the issue at hand?
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/05/is-operation-northwoods-good-comp-for.html
DPW is the one who suffers from acute gullibility.
i) People who lie, lie for a reason. Lying involves a cost/benefit analysis. If I lie, how much do I have to gain, and how much do I have to lose?
Evil people are motivated by their perceived self-interest. The 9/11 conspirators would have nothing to gain in comparison to what they’d have to lose if their plot were exposed. And in the adversarial climate of Washington, both inside and outside of gov’t, there would be a high risk of exposure. That isn’t even slightly comparable to “lying” about the Federal Reserve.
The fact that many people lie some of the time doesn’t create any presumption that someone lied to cover up a heinous crime. If he committed a heinous crime, he is likely to lie about it, but the fact that he lies from time to time is no evidence that he committed a heinous crime.
If you lie on your tax returns, that doesn’t make you a serial killer.
ii) It’s also credulous to assume that most folks who work for the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD and so on are as evil as DPW has to assume for his conspiracy theory to work.
Gov’t employees are not a breed apart from other human beings. They are not more dishonest or more corrupt than the private sector.
If gov’t employees are that untrustworthy, then 9/11 Truthers are just as untrustworthy, since both groups are just a subset of humanity in general.
Not to mention all of the additional conspirators he needs after the fact, both inside and outside of gov’t, to participate in the cover-up.
DPW’s scepticism is self-refuting. 9/11 Truthers are selectively sceptical and selectively gullible.
“When Condi Rice stands before a press conference and says no one ever imagined terrorists would fly a hijacked plane into a building, and then it comes out that the government had war games simulating just such a scenario, Condi was lying.”
How is that statement evidence that Condi was lying?
i) For one thing, Condi was head of the NSA, not the DOD. Why assume that she’s cognizant of everything that goes on over at the Pentagon? It’s a big place. Even the Secretary of Defense isn’t cognizant of everything that goes on under his own roof.
ii) It’s also possible to forget something you used to know.
iii) But let’s assume that she was lying. How does that constitute evidence that 9/11 was an inside job?
What motive would she have to lie? What’s the context of her statement? She’s on the defensive. She was head of the NSA, as well as Bush’s National Security Advisor. Why didn’t she see it coming? Why didn’t she connect the dots?
Like many incompetent bureaucrats, she tells a lie to excuse her incompetence. To minimize blame for her failure to anticipate 9/11.
Isn’t that a simpler, more plausible explanation than a conspiracy theory involving countless conspirators both inside and outside of gov’t?
“When George Bush says(not once but twice), he saw the first plane fly into Tower 1 before he spoke to the children at Booker T. Washington Elementary, and it turns out that there was no videotape available then or live television coverage of the first plane, George was lying, or so monstrously confused he should submit to random drug testing, or at least provide us a copy of the script he's been reading from.”
What’s the point that DPW is trying to make? Is this supposed to be evidence that Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11?
If so, then the inference is obviously fallacious. When did Bush make this statement? Three months after 9/11.
How would a statement made three months after 9/11 be evidence of advance knowledge? The statement would only be evidence of advance knowledge if it was made before the fact. Before Bush was in a position to know what happened—unless he was in on the plot.
DPW is confusing the timing of the statement with the timing of the event. Even if the statement is anachronistic, it was made after the fact, long after Bush had seen footage of the planes hitting the towers.
The fact that Bush’s later statement about the sequence of events may be wrong is irrelevant to what he knew on 9/11. It’s only relevant to what he knew (or thought he knew) at the time he said it. The timing of a statement, and a statement about timing, are two different things. This is pretty elementary.
Why not assume that Bush misremembered the sequence? It’s very easy for subsequent information (or misinformation) to merge with our prior recollection and subconsciously change our recollection of events.
In fact, here’s a textbook example: Many Bush-haters think they remember Bush say that we needed to invade Iraq because it posed an “imminent threat.”
Of course, Bush never said that. In his State of the Union speech, he went out of his way to say the very opposite.
That was a memorable speech. Unlike the average State of the Union speech, there was exceptional public interest in this speech. And that’s because this was shortly after 9/11. Everyone was expecting Bush to use the occasion to say how the US was going to retaliate.
So how could so many people forget such a memorable speech?
And even if they did forget, it would be easy for them to refresh their faulty or fading memory. The text of the speech is posted at the White House website. And if you don’t trust the White House website, there are many other places on the web where you can pull up a transcript.
Yet despite all that, there’s a persistent urban legend that Bush lied us into war by claiming that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the US.
People think they remember what he said at the time they heard it live. But they don’t. What they really remember is subsequent coverage of the speech, which they subconsciously merge with their original recollection.
If they can misremember, why can’t Bush?
“Government bureaucrats should be assumed to be lying unless proven otherwise, not the reverse.”
By that logic, we should assume that official critics of the Bush administration like Michael Scheuer and Richard Clarke are lying unless proven otherwise.
“It seems as though no matter how many deceptions elements within the US government orchestrate, from the creation of the Federal Reserve, to the Lusitania, to the USS Kearney, to Pearl Harbor, to Operation Northwoods, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to the USS Liberty, to 9/11, ever the gullible rise up to believe the 'patriotic' lie.”
Let’s run through these items, shall we?
Lusitania
How is this evidence that American bureaucrats deceive people?
Pearl Harbor/USS Liberty/USS Kearny/Gulf of Tonkin
DPW is pyramiding. Using one conspiracy theory to prop up another conspiracy theory. All of his examples are disputed examples.
Operation Nothrwoods
i) That plan was produced at the height of the Cold War, around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That emotional climate didn’t exist in the 8 months before 9/11, when Bush took office.
ii) Despite Cold War tension, Operation Northwoods was never adopted or implemented. How does the fact that Operation Northwoods was rejected by gov’t bureaucrats prove what gov’t bureaucrats are prepared to do?
iii) This was also before we developed such an adversarial press corps. Before Watergate. Before the anti-war movement. A president could get away with more back then (e.g. JFK’s poor health and sex life).
iv) Finally, is Operation Northwoods even analogous to the issue at hand?
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/05/is-operation-northwoods-good-comp-for.html
DPW is the one who suffers from acute gullibility.
i) People who lie, lie for a reason. Lying involves a cost/benefit analysis. If I lie, how much do I have to gain, and how much do I have to lose?
Evil people are motivated by their perceived self-interest. The 9/11 conspirators would have nothing to gain in comparison to what they’d have to lose if their plot were exposed. And in the adversarial climate of Washington, both inside and outside of gov’t, there would be a high risk of exposure. That isn’t even slightly comparable to “lying” about the Federal Reserve.
The fact that many people lie some of the time doesn’t create any presumption that someone lied to cover up a heinous crime. If he committed a heinous crime, he is likely to lie about it, but the fact that he lies from time to time is no evidence that he committed a heinous crime.
If you lie on your tax returns, that doesn’t make you a serial killer.
ii) It’s also credulous to assume that most folks who work for the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD and so on are as evil as DPW has to assume for his conspiracy theory to work.
Gov’t employees are not a breed apart from other human beings. They are not more dishonest or more corrupt than the private sector.
If gov’t employees are that untrustworthy, then 9/11 Truthers are just as untrustworthy, since both groups are just a subset of humanity in general.
Not to mention all of the additional conspirators he needs after the fact, both inside and outside of gov’t, to participate in the cover-up.
DPW’s scepticism is self-refuting. 9/11 Truthers are selectively sceptical and selectively gullible.
Pro-Life Legislation Works
Chris Price has drawn our attention to a recent article by Michael New that discusses the effectiveness of pro-life legislation. I recommend reading the entire article, but here's the conclusion:
During the past 35 years, the pro-life movement has made some real progress--progress that pro-lifers could at times do a better job of advertising. During the 1990s more states enacted parental-involvement laws, waiting periods, and informed-consent laws. More importantly, the number of abortions has fallen in 12 out of the past 14 years and the total number of abortions has declined by 21 percent since 1990. These gains are largely due to pro-life political victories at the federal level in the 1980s and at the state level in the 1990s, both of which have made it easier to pass pro-life legislation. Furthermore, since the next President may have the opportunity to nominate as many as four justices to the Supreme Court, the right-to-life movement would be very well advised to stay the course in 2008.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Adventures in Special Pleading: How to Sink Your Case for Abortion Rights
Zach Moore responded to my critical interaction with his comments on Craig Sowders blog.
Characteristic of Moore, his post contains pictures of aborted fetuses and embryos along with theologically ignorant slogans tacked on to the pictures. Apparently attacking caricatures is what passes for Moore's claim to have achieved cognitive rest in atheism. Always one to attack 50 foot straw men, Moore doesn't disappoint.
He says things like: "This little boy likes baseball and jellybeans, but God decided to abort him, just like the other thirty percent of pregnancies that end in miscarriage." But of course the 30% number has been challenged (cf. Davis, Abortion and the Christian, pp. 60-61; and Higler, Human Reproduction, pp. 136-152). Some place it lower, some higher. However, many embryologists have noted that the numbers are skewed since in a high amount of cases, fertilization has not occurred and what are aborted are not complete human beings (cf. Ashley and Moraczewski, Is the Biological Subject of Human Rights Present From Conception?, in The Fetal Tissue Issue, p.47). The main point here is to demonstrate that it is rather unclear how well Moore has studied this issue, and that he has the tendency to make empirically false, or at least highly disputed, claims.
Secondly, it's rather odd to hear pro-choicers use the "God commits abortion" argument since (a) it's flat out wrong in that God is not the actor, we have confusions about causality here, and (b) all people who die, or get raped, or steal, etc., did so on the basis of the decree of God. So why don't we read sophisticated atheists arguing that theists shouldn't think murder or rape immoral since God allows them? I've also found these objections to commit composition fallacies. Assuming God's good plan is made up of all good parts.
The post is much shorter when you remove the "argument ad pictorum" and the "ubiquitous pejoratives", like:
· "Paul Manata; a man who walks and talks with the bearing and authority of someone who speaks regularly with an omnipotent, omniscient, invisible friend."
· "It's possible that Paul's invisible friend tells him whether to choose Cheerios or Wheaties for breakfast."
· "I'm always glad to know that I've merited the attention of God's chosen."
So we'll try and weed out the pejoratives, the smarm, and Bill Maher condescension of this New Atheist, and focus on what Moore takes to be his substantive rejoinders.
Moore begins by struggling to make his "perfect world" justifier for his "safe, legal, and rare" stance make sense. I'll refer to this principle as,
[UP] the Utopian Principle
He recognizes the problem he has invoking [UP],
Moore says that he,
We'll label this principle:
[UP*] Utopian Principle acheived by conceiving
I'm still unsure how this "clarifier" does the wok Moore wants it to. I'm unsure if he knows the almost unlimited range "conceiving" has. Is he using this term as it has been used traditionally in philosophy? As David Chalmers writes, "There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and from there to a metaphysical claim (about the nature of things in the world)." Typically, 'conceivability' has been taken to mean, thinkable without logical contradiction. And there should be no doubt that I can fit a whole bunch of fun into that big box.
Okay, so at this point in the debate Moore has given his [UP], then clarified (he thinks) it to mean [UP*], and was then questioned by Craig Sowder as to why Moore would want abortions rare. Moore then acts as if I ignored some relevant qualifier, though I'm unclear how it helps Moore out, at all. Nevertheless, since Moore takes it to be important, I'll quote him quoting himself in full:
angst –noun, plural ängste /ŋkstə/ [engk-stuh]. a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish.
And I didn't suggest that education was "the solution" but named it as a possible solution given that if the belief: "This entity is a living, human being" were dropped, one side of the conflict would be eliminated. I had stated that there was more than one way Moore's [UP*] could go.
But Moore feels he has a substantive rejoinder hidden in this emphasis on the "educational." He writes,
The main point here is that it is easy to conceive of a world where the "angst" is removed. The nature of [UP*] allows my suggestions. There's no "logical contradictions." So, despite all of Moore's efforts, he's still done nothing to non-arbitrarily answer Sowder's question. Why did he opt for one conceivability and not another? This is precisely the question up for dispute. In other words, a little analysis reveals the question begging nature of Moore's gerrymandering.
Moore then moves on to his "primary" argument for abortion. What is important to note is that the context of my post dealt with Moore's claim that the human status of the fetus was irrelevant to his argument, such that the fetus could be fully human and yet rightfully aborted in all circumstances. I attempted to show that this view was indicative of Moore's more general ignorance on matters abortion related. Moore now tells us what his main argument is:
[FS] Human fetuses have full sovereignty over their body
I maintain that by Moore allowing [FS], which he would have to if the fetus was a "full human", he undercuts his entire argument. So, my claim will be that Moore's argument only works if the fetus is not a human. And, of course, this makes his position irrelevant to the abortion debate since no pro-lifer disagrees that non-human "stuff" in the body is, ipso facto, immoral to remove. Therefore, Moore will need to either drop his argument as an argument for abortion, or submit it to the editors for some major revisions.
Now, originally I had pointed out a material objection to Moore's sovereignty thesis, saying:
"First, it's not true that all humans have sovereignty over their body and can do what they will with it making what they do ethically okay. They can't (well, shouldn't) strap bombs to it and run into occupied office buildings."
Moore takes umbrage with this, I'll quote his response at length:
i) I reject Moore's false dichotomy that "Either Paul agrees that we have sovereignty over our bodies or he does not. If we do not, then we cannot decide for ourselves what kind of food to eat." I do not grant full sovereignty over the body as Moore defines it. For example, I don't think it extends to humans living inside our body. So on Moore's terms, I reject sovereignty. But I'm unclear how it follows that I "cannot decide for ourselves what kind of food to eat" becauase I reject that "one can kill full humans living inside their body, i.e., their children." I call this view of sovereignty then, Moore-sovereignty.
ii) I reject the idea that each and every single human being has the kind of "sovereignty" over their body as Moore suggests. For example, he claims that only the individual has the right to decide of some malignant tumor should be removed. Unfortunately, some young children suffer from cancer. Some of them might not want any medical surgery, or they may think, however cute, that eating "magic gumdrops" will cure it. In these instances, I'm glad that those children don't have the sovereignty Moore would like them to have, and their parents or guardians can make that decision for them.
iii) As is painfully obvious, Moore begs the question against my own objection saving that: "I am not talking about things people do to each other with their bodies." But since we've granted the full humanity of the fetus, you are, in fact, "talking about things people do to each other with their bodies." Since the fetus is a human, then it can't be the body of the woman's that is getting killed. So Moore fails to show how my argument from analogy is off.
iv) One wonders if I knocked Moore out, and then sowed a three-year old into his back using skin graphs from other areas of Moore's body, and I included some breathing and feeding apparatuses for the toddler to survive a bit, upon awakening, could Moore now kill that toddler? That seems odd. If not, then he's giving up his 'sovereignty' to do with inside his body whatever he wants.
v) Given that we both hold to [FS], then what of the fetus's sovereignty over what goes into or happens to her body? Here's an argument:
[1] If I am Moore-sovereign, then I have a right to not have burning chemicals placed on and in my body without my permission, especially if I am legally innocent. I also have the right to not have my body sucked into huge vacuums and them chopped to pieces.
[2] [FS] states that fetuses are Moore-sovereign.
[3] Therefore, human fetuses have a right to not have burning chemicals placed on and in their body without their permission, especially if they are legally innocent. They also have the right to not have their body sucked into huge vacuums and them chopped to pieces.
Which premise can be denied? Moore admitted he held to [1]. [2] was shown to be logically entailed from his sovereignty statements. Therefore, [3] follows necessarily. QED.
Therefore, my argument stands. Moore's argument doesn't go through if the fetus is a full human. What makes this argument even stronger, is that I've drawn my conclusion from premises Moore gave me.
vi) I am not guilty of special pleading, Moore is. I do think I have a right to remove tumors, and I think women have a right to remove tumors. The fetus, to quote Ahnold, "Is not a tumah." I do not think that I have the right to murder a fetus if, ex hypothesi, I could carry one. So I also, quite consistently, do not think that women have the right to murder their fetuses. These distinctions seem all rather elementary to me. There's not so much as a case for special pleading on my end. Indeed, (v) showed that Moore was guilty of special pleading.
Moore makes claims like this, apparently assuming they strengthen his case:
Moreover, the fetus is not like a tumor, a wart, or any other non-fully human "stuff" in my body. It's not clear that the right to do what you want with non-human "stuff" in your body entails the right to do the same with fully human persons in your body. So Moore needs to justify this massive leap.
As I made clear in my original post, it is relevant whether the fetus is a full human. I wrote: "So, Moore thinks "personhood" (or, if he will, humanity) doesn't matter for his argument. I beg to differ, for more than one reason:"
So, I am arguing that if the fetus is a full human, Moore's argument sucks. If he wants to add the extra premise that:
[P] The fetus is not fully human.
But Moore never argued [P]. He thinks it "immaterial." I do not. I have argued why it is not. Since that argument goes through, and it does, then Moore needs to revamp his argument.
Of course I will argue for the full humanity, [~P]. I have "science" on my side here too. In fact, arguing for the full humanity of the fetus is actually one of the easiest arguments to make, I think. But that's "immaterial." Before we can go anywhere else, Moore needs to deal with the actual argument I'm giving, rather than move goal posts. So I'll assume he'll join me in assuming the full humanity of the human, [FS], and then seeing how those two assumptions entail that Moore should be pro-life.
I'm not sure why he's stuck on "within" either. Doesn't "topicality" work too? Or can I do whatever I want to Moore's body so long as it's not "within" it? And, besides, Moore just gave the farm away, again. Abortion methods do things to the fetuses body, on it and in it, that go against Moore-sovereignty.
Moore now continues to run with the "get me away from Paul's actual argument" ball as far as he can. He writes,
[1] No human is "one organ among all others."
[2] Fetuses are human. (granted because of it's immateriality)
[3] Therefore, no fetuses are "one organ among all others."
QED.
I wrote,
"Third, another thing Craig might want to ask, it seems that not only do we have exceptions to murder, but sometimes parents don't have obligations toward their young children. Since we're dealing with a mother taking the life of her child, we have another moral consideration in play. Do we have exceptions here, too?"
Moore responds quite incoherently,
[1] A pregnant woman has the right to destroy any living thing in her body, without exception.
and,
[2] Fetuses are living full human beings.
and,
[3] Fetuses are living full human beings inside their pregnant mother's body, making them children of the pregnant women.
then it is the case that,
[4] Therefore, a mother has a right to destroy a living full human being that is her child.
QED.
Again, all of these premises are premises Moore either explicitly or hypothetically grants.
I asked about ES cells and their existence in a Petri dish. As of right now, we harvest them from embryos, many frozen and not living in a mother's body. Apparently Moore can't go through with the logic of his position for he claims, and I quote him at length,
Moreover, I don't resort to any Platonism, neo or otherwise. I could make the case playing Moore's own game for the full humanity of the fetus. One place where this argument is strongly advanced is, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, by George and Tollefsen. See answer to pedantic questions in ch. 2, esp. pp. 36-42.
But, even in this, I can't find agreement. See, I'm not the biggest fan of Boddington's anymore. Used to like it a lot, not too much anymore. It's more beautiful looking than it is tasting.
I'd still by ole Zach a beer or three of he were ever out my way. Cheers!
Characteristic of Moore, his post contains pictures of aborted fetuses and embryos along with theologically ignorant slogans tacked on to the pictures. Apparently attacking caricatures is what passes for Moore's claim to have achieved cognitive rest in atheism. Always one to attack 50 foot straw men, Moore doesn't disappoint.
He says things like: "This little boy likes baseball and jellybeans, but God decided to abort him, just like the other thirty percent of pregnancies that end in miscarriage." But of course the 30% number has been challenged (cf. Davis, Abortion and the Christian, pp. 60-61; and Higler, Human Reproduction, pp. 136-152). Some place it lower, some higher. However, many embryologists have noted that the numbers are skewed since in a high amount of cases, fertilization has not occurred and what are aborted are not complete human beings (cf. Ashley and Moraczewski, Is the Biological Subject of Human Rights Present From Conception?, in The Fetal Tissue Issue, p.47). The main point here is to demonstrate that it is rather unclear how well Moore has studied this issue, and that he has the tendency to make empirically false, or at least highly disputed, claims.
Secondly, it's rather odd to hear pro-choicers use the "God commits abortion" argument since (a) it's flat out wrong in that God is not the actor, we have confusions about causality here, and (b) all people who die, or get raped, or steal, etc., did so on the basis of the decree of God. So why don't we read sophisticated atheists arguing that theists shouldn't think murder or rape immoral since God allows them? I've also found these objections to commit composition fallacies. Assuming God's good plan is made up of all good parts.
The post is much shorter when you remove the "argument ad pictorum" and the "ubiquitous pejoratives", like:
· "Paul Manata; a man who walks and talks with the bearing and authority of someone who speaks regularly with an omnipotent, omniscient, invisible friend."
· "It's possible that Paul's invisible friend tells him whether to choose Cheerios or Wheaties for breakfast."
· "I'm always glad to know that I've merited the attention of God's chosen."
So we'll try and weed out the pejoratives, the smarm, and Bill Maher condescension of this New Atheist, and focus on what Moore takes to be his substantive rejoinders.
Moore begins by struggling to make his "perfect world" justifier for his "safe, legal, and rare" stance make sense. I'll refer to this principle as,
[UP] the Utopian Principle
He recognizes the problem he has invoking [UP],
After writing this, I realized that the phrase "perfect world" would probably be taken all too literally. After all, in a "perfect world," birth control would never fail, right?I did not take him too literally, and am unsure if his claim about "birth control" was meant to be serious or not.
Moore says that he,
came back to clarify my use of that phrase to mean "the most optimal world that I can conceive."Right, I got that.
We'll label this principle:
[UP*] Utopian Principle acheived by conceiving
I'm still unsure how this "clarifier" does the wok Moore wants it to. I'm unsure if he knows the almost unlimited range "conceiving" has. Is he using this term as it has been used traditionally in philosophy? As David Chalmers writes, "There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim (about what can be known or conceived), from there to a modal claim (about what is possible or necessary), and from there to a metaphysical claim (about the nature of things in the world)." Typically, 'conceivability' has been taken to mean, thinkable without logical contradiction. And there should be no doubt that I can fit a whole bunch of fun into that big box.
Okay, so at this point in the debate Moore has given his [UP], then clarified (he thinks) it to mean [UP*], and was then questioned by Craig Sowder as to why Moore would want abortions rare. Moore then acts as if I ignored some relevant qualifier, though I'm unclear how it helps Moore out, at all. Nevertheless, since Moore takes it to be important, I'll quote him quoting himself in full:
At this point, I was asked by Craig why rarity would be something I would hope for, if there was nothing immoral about abortion. Paul jumped on my answer to this question, which he neglected to quote in its entirety, but which I will do here:Moore thinks I've misdiagnosed this. He writes, "Paul claims that I have merely pointed out the existence of angst, and suggests that education is the solution." Well, it is angst:
'The rarity I would like to see for these procedures isn't inspired by any intrinsic immorality, but because it's such a difficult choice for women, who have to choose between their procreative and self-preservative instincts.'[emphasis added by Moore]
angst –noun, plural ängste /ŋkstə/ [engk-stuh]. a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish.
And I didn't suggest that education was "the solution" but named it as a possible solution given that if the belief: "This entity is a living, human being" were dropped, one side of the conflict would be eliminated. I had stated that there was more than one way Moore's [UP*] could go.
But Moore feels he has a substantive rejoinder hidden in this emphasis on the "educational." He writes,
I don't think that any amount of education can alleviate the emotional strain of choosing between two contradictory instincts. This is not an intellectual matter we're dealing with- it's a subconscious, primordial battle between the basic neurological impulses nearly all animals share: SURVIVE. REPRODUCE. This conflict is only subject to philosophical gerrymandering by those who don't have to answer these calls. And these are truly effectual calls, mind you- not subject to reason, evidence, exegesis, or any such intellectual strategy. Thus, the "angst" Paul correctly identifies is not so easily assuaged, and thus I am not as confident as Paul that this could be ameliorated with simple education (would that it were so).Not only must I have missed this massive internal battle that my hamster went through as it ate its young, or my thousands of hours watching Discovery channel and seeing the countless animals that would kill or abandon their young. One also need not point out the radically different state of affairs in the ANE. But let's leave all this alone for the moment.
The main point here is that it is easy to conceive of a world where the "angst" is removed. The nature of [UP*] allows my suggestions. There's no "logical contradictions." So, despite all of Moore's efforts, he's still done nothing to non-arbitrarily answer Sowder's question. Why did he opt for one conceivability and not another? This is precisely the question up for dispute. In other words, a little analysis reveals the question begging nature of Moore's gerrymandering.
Moore then moves on to his "primary" argument for abortion. What is important to note is that the context of my post dealt with Moore's claim that the human status of the fetus was irrelevant to his argument, such that the fetus could be fully human and yet rightfully aborted in all circumstances. I attempted to show that this view was indicative of Moore's more general ignorance on matters abortion related. Moore now tells us what his main argument is:
My primary argument in favor of allowing abortion is that all human beings are sovereign over their own bodies. Thus, anything growing inside my body stays there only by my own approval (assuming that I have the available medical technology to remove it at my discretion).Since Moore claims the fetus could be a full human and his argument still goes through, and since that was what I was objecting to, I will assume that we both accept this principle, which is logically entailed by the above statements of Moore. Call it the Fetus's Sovereignty principle:
[FS] Human fetuses have full sovereignty over their body
I maintain that by Moore allowing [FS], which he would have to if the fetus was a "full human", he undercuts his entire argument. So, my claim will be that Moore's argument only works if the fetus is not a human. And, of course, this makes his position irrelevant to the abortion debate since no pro-lifer disagrees that non-human "stuff" in the body is, ipso facto, immoral to remove. Therefore, Moore will need to either drop his argument as an argument for abortion, or submit it to the editors for some major revisions.
Now, originally I had pointed out a material objection to Moore's sovereignty thesis, saying:
"First, it's not true that all humans have sovereignty over their body and can do what they will with it making what they do ethically okay. They can't (well, shouldn't) strap bombs to it and run into occupied office buildings."
Moore takes umbrage with this, I'll quote his response at length:
Perhaps Paul has not understood what I mean by "sovereignty" over one's body. He seems to think that I'm mounting a variation of Homer Simpson's "Pie Eating" argument: "All right pie, I'm just going to do this [opens and closes mouth] and if you get eaten it's your own fault!" I am not talking about things people do to each other with their bodies; I am talking specifically about the right to decide what things stay in one's body and what things stay out. That is, one has the right to decide what kind of food one wants to eat, what kind of aesthetic modifications can be made to one's body, and what kinds of medical procedures should be undertaken. Of the latter, these include the decision to undergo a cardiac bypass, the decision to undergo a gastric bypass, and the decision to bypass pain and suffering through euthanasia. Either Paul agrees that we have sovereignty over our bodies or he does not. If we do not, then we cannot decide for ourselves what kind of food to eat. It's possible that Paul's invisible friend tells him whether to choose Cheerios or Wheaties for breakfast. But if Paul does agree that we have sovereignty over our bodies, that only he has the right to decide if his malignant testicle should be removed, then he seems to be special pleading for women not to have the right to remove anything they want from their bodies as well. [emphasis original]There are plenty of errors in the above:
i) I reject Moore's false dichotomy that "Either Paul agrees that we have sovereignty over our bodies or he does not. If we do not, then we cannot decide for ourselves what kind of food to eat." I do not grant full sovereignty over the body as Moore defines it. For example, I don't think it extends to humans living inside our body. So on Moore's terms, I reject sovereignty. But I'm unclear how it follows that I "cannot decide for ourselves what kind of food to eat" becauase I reject that "one can kill full humans living inside their body, i.e., their children." I call this view of sovereignty then, Moore-sovereignty.
ii) I reject the idea that each and every single human being has the kind of "sovereignty" over their body as Moore suggests. For example, he claims that only the individual has the right to decide of some malignant tumor should be removed. Unfortunately, some young children suffer from cancer. Some of them might not want any medical surgery, or they may think, however cute, that eating "magic gumdrops" will cure it. In these instances, I'm glad that those children don't have the sovereignty Moore would like them to have, and their parents or guardians can make that decision for them.
iii) As is painfully obvious, Moore begs the question against my own objection saving that: "I am not talking about things people do to each other with their bodies." But since we've granted the full humanity of the fetus, you are, in fact, "talking about things people do to each other with their bodies." Since the fetus is a human, then it can't be the body of the woman's that is getting killed. So Moore fails to show how my argument from analogy is off.
iv) One wonders if I knocked Moore out, and then sowed a three-year old into his back using skin graphs from other areas of Moore's body, and I included some breathing and feeding apparatuses for the toddler to survive a bit, upon awakening, could Moore now kill that toddler? That seems odd. If not, then he's giving up his 'sovereignty' to do with inside his body whatever he wants.
v) Given that we both hold to [FS], then what of the fetus's sovereignty over what goes into or happens to her body? Here's an argument:
[1] If I am Moore-sovereign, then I have a right to not have burning chemicals placed on and in my body without my permission, especially if I am legally innocent. I also have the right to not have my body sucked into huge vacuums and them chopped to pieces.
[2] [FS] states that fetuses are Moore-sovereign.
[3] Therefore, human fetuses have a right to not have burning chemicals placed on and in their body without their permission, especially if they are legally innocent. They also have the right to not have their body sucked into huge vacuums and them chopped to pieces.
Which premise can be denied? Moore admitted he held to [1]. [2] was shown to be logically entailed from his sovereignty statements. Therefore, [3] follows necessarily. QED.
Therefore, my argument stands. Moore's argument doesn't go through if the fetus is a full human. What makes this argument even stronger, is that I've drawn my conclusion from premises Moore gave me.
vi) I am not guilty of special pleading, Moore is. I do think I have a right to remove tumors, and I think women have a right to remove tumors. The fetus, to quote Ahnold, "Is not a tumah." I do not think that I have the right to murder a fetus if, ex hypothesi, I could carry one. So I also, quite consistently, do not think that women have the right to murder their fetuses. These distinctions seem all rather elementary to me. There's not so much as a case for special pleading on my end. Indeed, (v) showed that Moore was guilty of special pleading.
Moore makes claims like this, apparently assuming they strengthen his case:
Although I appreciate the effort he has made on my behalf, he's running with the wrong assumption. I've already made it clear that I consider sovereignty to extend only to within one's own body for the sake of this argument.Yes, and I'm specifically defending what happens to and within the fetsus own body.
Moreover, the fetus is not like a tumor, a wart, or any other non-fully human "stuff" in my body. It's not clear that the right to do what you want with non-human "stuff" in your body entails the right to do the same with fully human persons in your body. So Moore needs to justify this massive leap.
Paul's counterexample of a suicide bomber is simply the product of a categorical error.No, it's not, as (iii) made clear above.
He's also assuming that I'm granting "human" or "person" status to a fetus, which I frankly have not; but again, it's immaterial to my argument.Here's where Moore starts to hedge his bets. ;-)
As I made clear in my original post, it is relevant whether the fetus is a full human. I wrote: "So, Moore thinks "personhood" (or, if he will, humanity) doesn't matter for his argument. I beg to differ, for more than one reason:"
So, I am arguing that if the fetus is a full human, Moore's argument sucks. If he wants to add the extra premise that:
[P] The fetus is not fully human.
But Moore never argued [P]. He thinks it "immaterial." I do not. I have argued why it is not. Since that argument goes through, and it does, then Moore needs to revamp his argument.
Of course I will argue for the full humanity, [~P]. I have "science" on my side here too. In fact, arguing for the full humanity of the fetus is actually one of the easiest arguments to make, I think. But that's "immaterial." Before we can go anywhere else, Moore needs to deal with the actual argument I'm giving, rather than move goal posts. So I'll assume he'll join me in assuming the full humanity of the human, [FS], and then seeing how those two assumptions entail that Moore should be pro-life.
Even if I were to follow Paul down his rabbit hole and grant that a fetus has the same sovereignty enjoyed by its mother, that only extends to within the fetus' own body.Moore wants to make this a "rabbit hole" issue, but it's clearly not since the very reason I bothered posting was because Moore made the ludicrous claim that his argument goes through even if the fetus is fully human.
I'm not sure why he's stuck on "within" either. Doesn't "topicality" work too? Or can I do whatever I want to Moore's body so long as it's not "within" it? And, besides, Moore just gave the farm away, again. Abortion methods do things to the fetuses body, on it and in it, that go against Moore-sovereignty.
Moore now continues to run with the "get me away from Paul's actual argument" ball as far as he can. He writes,
Paul, by special pleading against the complete sovereignty of women, would have us believe that one organ among all others is arbitrarily off-limits.But of course this is false if we grant the full humanity of the fetus. Moore has to since that point is "immaterial." His argument must go through if we do not grant humanity, and if we do. So, here's another argument.
[1] No human is "one organ among all others."
[2] Fetuses are human. (granted because of it's immateriality)
[3] Therefore, no fetuses are "one organ among all others."
QED.
I wrote,
"Third, another thing Craig might want to ask, it seems that not only do we have exceptions to murder, but sometimes parents don't have obligations toward their young children. Since we're dealing with a mother taking the life of her child, we have another moral consideration in play. Do we have exceptions here, too?"
Moore responds quite incoherently,
As has been shown previously, my argument is not one that advances a mother's right to take the life of her child. I've only argued that a woman's sovereignty is without exception, not that I am seeking exceptions as Paul does.But it is clear that if:
[1] A pregnant woman has the right to destroy any living thing in her body, without exception.
and,
[2] Fetuses are living full human beings.
and,
[3] Fetuses are living full human beings inside their pregnant mother's body, making them children of the pregnant women.
then it is the case that,
[4] Therefore, a mother has a right to destroy a living full human being that is her child.
QED.
Again, all of these premises are premises Moore either explicitly or hypothetically grants.
I asked about ES cells and their existence in a Petri dish. As of right now, we harvest them from embryos, many frozen and not living in a mother's body. Apparently Moore can't go through with the logic of his position for he claims, and I quote him at length,
At long last Paul has given us something to chew on. It's a great question, not least of which because there's no clear answer. However, I should make it clear that we're no longer dealing with my argument for sovereignty, since stem cells do not need to be cultured inside a woman's body. In engaging with the stem cell question, we finally have no choice but to grapple with the concept of "humanity" or "personhood." And my answer to this question is, though Paul may be disappointed by it, "I don't know." I don't hold to a neo-Platonic worldview, and therefore I don't feel epistemological pressure to categorize reality using Universal concepts. "Humanity," like "species" or "life" does not neatly intersect with the reality our senses and reason present to us. At what moment did I become a human being? When my father's sperm came in contact with my mother's egg? But when, precisely? When the sperm passed the corona radiata? When it entered, or after it had passed, the zona pellucida? Before or after the cell membranes fused? Before or after the second meiotic division of the egg? Before or after the first mitotic division? At what stage of mitosis: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase? The interim points, like Zeno's paradox, are infinite; yet a human is the result.But if we grant the full humanity of the embryo, then she has sovereignty over her stem cells. This follows, by the strictest logic, from Moore's own premises. Indeed, his own "organ" argument leads to the conclusion that, if he were consistent, he'd have to say that the embryo is the only one that can tell us whether she wants to give up the ES cells. But Moore just doesn't have the courage to follow his own logic.
Moreover, I don't resort to any Platonism, neo or otherwise. I could make the case playing Moore's own game for the full humanity of the fetus. One place where this argument is strongly advanced is, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, by George and Tollefsen. See answer to pedantic questions in ch. 2, esp. pp. 36-42.
I'm always glad to know that I've merited the attention of God's chosen, especially when there are so many more enjoyable things to do in Michigan's own Tulip Country. Between keeping one's wife pregnant, instilling a fear of The Lord in one's children, and drinking deeply of the Boddington's, I consider myself lucky to register on the radar. Cheers, sir!I can't help reading this without adding a nervous laughter coming from Moore. I see no way he can get around the arguments I've just leveled toward his way.
But, even in this, I can't find agreement. See, I'm not the biggest fan of Boddington's anymore. Used to like it a lot, not too much anymore. It's more beautiful looking than it is tasting.
I'd still by ole Zach a beer or three of he were ever out my way. Cheers!
The Ostrich Factor
"I want abortions safe, legal, and rare, harumph!"
That's what a lot of pro-choicers say.
Then, there's always the Cememtary of Choice, a site dedicated to remembering the thousands upon thousands of women who have died as a result of our "safe" and legal abortion laws.
Of course some might respond that all this means is that if we criminalize abortion, women will just resort to the back alley abortion scenario.
But of course that's probably not true as it wasn't true before Roe VS Wade
And of course the data could be even more off as most women wouldn't give up doctors who botched the abortion and rather said that they did it. The above findings were that of two pro-choice researchers.
So of course the "coat hanger" scare tactic is just a myth.
That's what a lot of pro-choicers say.
Then, there's always the Cememtary of Choice, a site dedicated to remembering the thousands upon thousands of women who have died as a result of our "safe" and legal abortion laws.
Of course some might respond that all this means is that if we criminalize abortion, women will just resort to the back alley abortion scenario.
But of course that's probably not true as it wasn't true before Roe VS Wade
And of course the data could be even more off as most women wouldn't give up doctors who botched the abortion and rather said that they did it. The above findings were that of two pro-choice researchers.
So of course the "coat hanger" scare tactic is just a myth.
When Thought Experiments Turn Real...
Charlie said...
Jim, here's a thought experiment for you.
You're trapped in a burning house, with little time to escape. To the left of you lies a 1yr old baby, Eddy. Eddy is drenched in smoke, barely able to breath, and sqealing in fear of the flames. He will be burnt alive in just a few seconds. But to the right of you rests a suitcase, inside of which are 50 embryos. They too will be burnt in a few seconds.
Your goal is to save as many persons as possible. You only have time to take one item with you when you escape: either Eddy or the suitcase.
Which would you take?
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-issue.html#c6934775922614912457
Rescued from Katrina, new life for a frozen embryo
· New Orleans baby being delivered by Caesarean
· Troopers saved storage tanks in flooded hospitalSuzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday January 16 2007 Article history
The new baby entering the world today in New Orleans will most definitely not be called Katrina. That much is guaranteed, and when he or she is old enough to ask how he or she got here, the parents will have quite a story to tell.
The child being born by Caesarean section today to Rebekah and Glen Markham is counted as one of the earliest survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans some 18 months before his or her birth. The Markhams do not know the baby's gender.
When the hurricane hit, their baby was a frozen embryo at a fertility treatment centre at Lakeland hospital in eastern New Orleans, a part of the city that was severely affected by flooding. When the power went out, the embryo that would grow into the Markhams' baby - and the hopes of having a family for hundreds of other couples - was put at immediate risk.
The embryos, the products of in vitro fertilisation, were stored at the hospital for couples seeking to add to their families at a later date after a successful treatment, or for those whose earlier attempts to have a child had failed. There were 1,200 such embryos at the hospital.
Frozen embryos are typically stored in liquid nitrogen tanks at temperatures of 320 degrees below zero, and New Orleans in those days was sweltering. It was also lawless.
At the time, the prospect of losing their stored embryos did not even occur to the couple. Other concerns were too pressing. Ms Markham, 32, a physiotherapist, had fled New Orleans with the couple's son, Witt, who was also conceived following fertility treatment. Mr Markham, 42, a detective with the New Orleans police force, stayed on the job where he was assigned to stop looters.
But the hospital had already contacted Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Bianco, and was preparing a rescue plan for the stored embryos.
"Thank the Lord they thought about them," Ms Markham told the Times-Picayune newspaper. But for that intervention, the Markhams might never had had their baby, or the task of coming up with a way of best commemorating that odyssey of an embryo.
Friends have suggested they call their baby Harry Cane, or Cat Five - for the magnitude of storm that hit New Orleans. Mr Markham is thinking about Breeze, if it is a girl. He is also taken with Nitro, from frozen nitrogen, if it is a boy.
The hospital's rescue plan began two days before Katrina made landfall. At the fertility clinic housed on its premises, technicians moved the embryos, stored in individual labelled vials for each family, into four large canisters of liquid nitrogen. The technicians then topped off those tanks with additional nitrogen, and moved the embryos to the third floor of the hospital.
Even if the waters rose, the embryos would remain dry. But Katrina's eight foot surge of water knocked out the electricity supply for the hospital. While the embryos inside the tanks might have survived in an air-conditioned room, doctors knew they would not last long in the subtropical temperatures. "We were troubled about the embryos and how we could easily access the hospital," Dr Brenda Sartor told the newspaper. "The city was still in lockdown mode, and we knew it would have to be coordinated through a civil authority."
After a few calls, the hospital arranged for state troopers and visiting police officers from Illinois to rescue the embryos. The police, accompanied by two doctors, set out in trucks, towing flat bottomed boats behind them.
Once inside the hospital, they paddled through flooded hallways until they reached the third floor, taking care to keep the storage tanks upright so the nitrogen would not spill, and compromise the embryos.
The Markhams' baby will be the second delivery from the rescued embryos. A Mississippi couple had twins last month.
"This is something the baby will always be able to tell, about his rescue and birth," Ms Markham said. "People like to hear good from something so devastating."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jan/16/hurricanekatrina.usa
Couple celebrate birth of son after embryo rescued from Katrina floods
Last updated at 18:05 16 January 2007
A couple whose frozen embryo was rescued from a flooded hospital after Hurricane Katrina hit have had a baby boy - and named him Noah.
Noah Markham was born by Caesarean section at St Tammany Hospital weighing 8 pounds and 6 1/2 ounces. His mother, Rebekah Markham, had decided on the name "because God put it on his heart to build an ark." Doctors said the baby boy was in good shape.
Relatives gathered around as father Glen Markham carried the baby downstairs to meet them. For a few seconds he tried to make them guess whether the baby in the pink-and-blue striped cap was a boy or a girl, then he said: "It's a boy" to an eruption of cheers and applause.
His grandmother, Lezette Crosby, got on the telephone to another relative: "It's Noah, Noah, it's a boy."
When Katrina struck, the baby was one of 1,400 embryos frozen for storage in canisters of liquid nitrogen at a hospital in eastern New Orleans. Rebekah Markham, 32, had evacuated before the hurricane with their toddler, Glen Witter "Witt" Markham Jr. Her husband, a New Orleans police officer, stayed to work.
Mother and son actually evacuated twice. The first time was to relatives' about a half-hour from their brick-and-tan-siding home, nestled among 40-foot-tall (12-metre) pine trees in Covington.
But the storm toppled trees and cut electricity across south Louisiana. Their first refuge became a poor place to care for a toddler who had turned 1 only 10 days before the storm, so they went to Rebekah Markham's sister's home in central Louisiana.
A cell phone text message - "R U OK?" - the day after the storm told her that her husband had survived. He was stationed across the Mississippi River from flooded parts of the city. But it had its own dangers. One member of his squad was shot in the head on August 29 after confronting looters at a gas station.
Markham, 42, never got his wife's answer to his text query. His phone's battery was dead. "It was about two weeks before I found out that they were OK," he said.
It took longer than that to have time to think about the embryos. When Rebekah Markham called, she learned that they had been rescued.
Dr Belinda "Sissy" Sartor of The Fertility Institute of New Orleans and the clinic's lab director, Roman Pyrzak, had led seven Illinois Conservation Police officers and three from Louisiana State Police on a rescue expedition to the facility in flat-bottomed boats brought from Illinois.
Witt is also an in-vitro baby. His embryo was created at the same time as his brother's or sister's, but it was implanted immediately, while five others were frozen in case of miscarriage - and because the Markhams always wanted more than one child.
They are not sure whether they will have a third. "I thought three would be the ideal number," Rebekah Markham has said. But her medical problems have required bedrest for the first three months of each pregnancy. "And I was even more sick with this one than with Witt."
They also needed a lot of family help to take care of Witt, a boy who never seems to stop running. So any decision probably will be postponed until both children are in school.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-429284/Couple-celebrate-birth-son-embryo-rescued-Katrina-floods.html
Jim, here's a thought experiment for you.
You're trapped in a burning house, with little time to escape. To the left of you lies a 1yr old baby, Eddy. Eddy is drenched in smoke, barely able to breath, and sqealing in fear of the flames. He will be burnt alive in just a few seconds. But to the right of you rests a suitcase, inside of which are 50 embryos. They too will be burnt in a few seconds.
Your goal is to save as many persons as possible. You only have time to take one item with you when you escape: either Eddy or the suitcase.
Which would you take?
http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-issue.html#c6934775922614912457
Rescued from Katrina, new life for a frozen embryo
· New Orleans baby being delivered by Caesarean
· Troopers saved storage tanks in flooded hospitalSuzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday January 16 2007 Article history
The new baby entering the world today in New Orleans will most definitely not be called Katrina. That much is guaranteed, and when he or she is old enough to ask how he or she got here, the parents will have quite a story to tell.
The child being born by Caesarean section today to Rebekah and Glen Markham is counted as one of the earliest survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans some 18 months before his or her birth. The Markhams do not know the baby's gender.
When the hurricane hit, their baby was a frozen embryo at a fertility treatment centre at Lakeland hospital in eastern New Orleans, a part of the city that was severely affected by flooding. When the power went out, the embryo that would grow into the Markhams' baby - and the hopes of having a family for hundreds of other couples - was put at immediate risk.
The embryos, the products of in vitro fertilisation, were stored at the hospital for couples seeking to add to their families at a later date after a successful treatment, or for those whose earlier attempts to have a child had failed. There were 1,200 such embryos at the hospital.
Frozen embryos are typically stored in liquid nitrogen tanks at temperatures of 320 degrees below zero, and New Orleans in those days was sweltering. It was also lawless.
At the time, the prospect of losing their stored embryos did not even occur to the couple. Other concerns were too pressing. Ms Markham, 32, a physiotherapist, had fled New Orleans with the couple's son, Witt, who was also conceived following fertility treatment. Mr Markham, 42, a detective with the New Orleans police force, stayed on the job where he was assigned to stop looters.
But the hospital had already contacted Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Bianco, and was preparing a rescue plan for the stored embryos.
"Thank the Lord they thought about them," Ms Markham told the Times-Picayune newspaper. But for that intervention, the Markhams might never had had their baby, or the task of coming up with a way of best commemorating that odyssey of an embryo.
Friends have suggested they call their baby Harry Cane, or Cat Five - for the magnitude of storm that hit New Orleans. Mr Markham is thinking about Breeze, if it is a girl. He is also taken with Nitro, from frozen nitrogen, if it is a boy.
The hospital's rescue plan began two days before Katrina made landfall. At the fertility clinic housed on its premises, technicians moved the embryos, stored in individual labelled vials for each family, into four large canisters of liquid nitrogen. The technicians then topped off those tanks with additional nitrogen, and moved the embryos to the third floor of the hospital.
Even if the waters rose, the embryos would remain dry. But Katrina's eight foot surge of water knocked out the electricity supply for the hospital. While the embryos inside the tanks might have survived in an air-conditioned room, doctors knew they would not last long in the subtropical temperatures. "We were troubled about the embryos and how we could easily access the hospital," Dr Brenda Sartor told the newspaper. "The city was still in lockdown mode, and we knew it would have to be coordinated through a civil authority."
After a few calls, the hospital arranged for state troopers and visiting police officers from Illinois to rescue the embryos. The police, accompanied by two doctors, set out in trucks, towing flat bottomed boats behind them.
Once inside the hospital, they paddled through flooded hallways until they reached the third floor, taking care to keep the storage tanks upright so the nitrogen would not spill, and compromise the embryos.
The Markhams' baby will be the second delivery from the rescued embryos. A Mississippi couple had twins last month.
"This is something the baby will always be able to tell, about his rescue and birth," Ms Markham said. "People like to hear good from something so devastating."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jan/16/hurricanekatrina.usa
Couple celebrate birth of son after embryo rescued from Katrina floods
Last updated at 18:05 16 January 2007
A couple whose frozen embryo was rescued from a flooded hospital after Hurricane Katrina hit have had a baby boy - and named him Noah.
Noah Markham was born by Caesarean section at St Tammany Hospital weighing 8 pounds and 6 1/2 ounces. His mother, Rebekah Markham, had decided on the name "because God put it on his heart to build an ark." Doctors said the baby boy was in good shape.
Relatives gathered around as father Glen Markham carried the baby downstairs to meet them. For a few seconds he tried to make them guess whether the baby in the pink-and-blue striped cap was a boy or a girl, then he said: "It's a boy" to an eruption of cheers and applause.
His grandmother, Lezette Crosby, got on the telephone to another relative: "It's Noah, Noah, it's a boy."
When Katrina struck, the baby was one of 1,400 embryos frozen for storage in canisters of liquid nitrogen at a hospital in eastern New Orleans. Rebekah Markham, 32, had evacuated before the hurricane with their toddler, Glen Witter "Witt" Markham Jr. Her husband, a New Orleans police officer, stayed to work.
Mother and son actually evacuated twice. The first time was to relatives' about a half-hour from their brick-and-tan-siding home, nestled among 40-foot-tall (12-metre) pine trees in Covington.
But the storm toppled trees and cut electricity across south Louisiana. Their first refuge became a poor place to care for a toddler who had turned 1 only 10 days before the storm, so they went to Rebekah Markham's sister's home in central Louisiana.
A cell phone text message - "R U OK?" - the day after the storm told her that her husband had survived. He was stationed across the Mississippi River from flooded parts of the city. But it had its own dangers. One member of his squad was shot in the head on August 29 after confronting looters at a gas station.
Markham, 42, never got his wife's answer to his text query. His phone's battery was dead. "It was about two weeks before I found out that they were OK," he said.
It took longer than that to have time to think about the embryos. When Rebekah Markham called, she learned that they had been rescued.
Dr Belinda "Sissy" Sartor of The Fertility Institute of New Orleans and the clinic's lab director, Roman Pyrzak, had led seven Illinois Conservation Police officers and three from Louisiana State Police on a rescue expedition to the facility in flat-bottomed boats brought from Illinois.
Witt is also an in-vitro baby. His embryo was created at the same time as his brother's or sister's, but it was implanted immediately, while five others were frozen in case of miscarriage - and because the Markhams always wanted more than one child.
They are not sure whether they will have a third. "I thought three would be the ideal number," Rebekah Markham has said. But her medical problems have required bedrest for the first three months of each pregnancy. "And I was even more sick with this one than with Witt."
They also needed a lot of family help to take care of Witt, a boy who never seems to stop running. So any decision probably will be postponed until both children are in school.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-429284/Couple-celebrate-birth-son-embryo-rescued-Katrina-floods.html
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