For several years now, I've been posting a collection of resources for each Easter season. Here are the previous years' posts:
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
Here are some representative examples of issues we've addressed:
Tuesday, March 08, 2016
Falling dominos
I'm going to comment on an article by Louise Antony: "Does God Love Us"? M. Bergmann et al eds, Divine Evil: The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (OUP, 2007), chap. 1.
She's a prominent atheist philosopher. Her article is mainly about Gen 2-3, supplemented by Gen 22, Job, and a few other things.
God, I submit, is a terrible parent. He is, in fact, an abusive parent. God does not love his children, and anyone who suggests that we ought to love him is displaying the psychology of an abused child.
She gets off on the wrong foot with this characterization. To frame the issue that way interjects a systematic error into her reading.
i) Gen 2-3 presents the relation between God and man as a Creator/creature relation or landlord/tenant relation, not a parent/child relation. Antony is superimposing an alien interpretive grid onto the account. There are, of course, Biblical passages that describe God in paternal terms, but that's not how the dynamic is framed in Gen 2-3.
ii) Even if it were a parent/child relation, that's equivocal. Antony constantly conflates two different senses of "child":
a) An immature human being
b) A son or daughter
A "child" can be a grown child. An adult. Middle-aged. In that sense, a "child" can be a parent or grandparent in his or her own right. Even if your parents predecease you, you remain their "child".
iii) Once again, even if we cast it in parent/child terms, the relation between God and humans is only analogically a parent/child relation. That's subject to considerable qualification.
Monday, March 07, 2016
Trump Is Losing Ground
Trump had a bad weekend. He was defeated by double-digit percentages in Kansas, Maine, and Puerto Rico. He lost the voting that occurred in Louisiana on Saturday, he only got more votes there overall by winning the early voting, and he apparently ended up getting the same number of delegates from the state as Cruz did. Cruz got more delegates than Trump over the weekend, and Trump ended up with less than a third of the delegates overall.
The New York Times gives us a glimpse into the incompetence of Trump and his campaign:
He's very beatable. Keep fighting.
Larry Sabato recently tweeted:
I'm glad that anti-Trump groups are running ads in Florida, Illinois, etc. And they're addressing some important issues (e.g., Trump University, Trump on military issues). But two of Trump's biggest weaknesses, his mistreatment of women and his unelectability, aren't getting nearly as much attention as they should. Run some clips of Trump's derogatory comments about women on Howard Stern's show. Quote Trump's boasting about committing adultery with so many women. On the issue of electability, provide people with Trump's losing numbers in head-to-head match-ups with Clinton. After showing the numbers and explaining how unelectable he is, end the ad with the words "Donald Trump: Loser" in big letters across the screen. These kinds of ads ought to be running in as many states as possible. It's good to go after him on Trump University and other issues that have been getting a lot of attention, but his mistreatment of women and his unelectability are two others that don't seem to be getting the attention they deserve.
The New York Times gives us a glimpse into the incompetence of Trump and his campaign:
In conversations with some of his allies, who insisted on anonymity to relay those private talks, Trump campaign aides have expressed concern about the money being spent against him on television. The Trump campaign has no pollster, so it is governed by public polling and what the candidate himself observes while watching cable news….
“Trump has total disdain for the professional political class,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist. “He thinks they’re all about making money. Pollsters are hacks. Organization doesn’t matter. Their idea of a political organization is taking phone calls from some elected officials who wanted to endorse and making it work in the schedule. And that’ll catch up with you eventually.”
He's very beatable. Keep fighting.
Larry Sabato recently tweeted:
In Tampa I've seen dozens of pro-Rubio and anti-Trump TV ads over 2 days. None for anyone else.
I'm glad that anti-Trump groups are running ads in Florida, Illinois, etc. And they're addressing some important issues (e.g., Trump University, Trump on military issues). But two of Trump's biggest weaknesses, his mistreatment of women and his unelectability, aren't getting nearly as much attention as they should. Run some clips of Trump's derogatory comments about women on Howard Stern's show. Quote Trump's boasting about committing adultery with so many women. On the issue of electability, provide people with Trump's losing numbers in head-to-head match-ups with Clinton. After showing the numbers and explaining how unelectable he is, end the ad with the words "Donald Trump: Loser" in big letters across the screen. These kinds of ads ought to be running in as many states as possible. It's good to go after him on Trump University and other issues that have been getting a lot of attention, but his mistreatment of women and his unelectability are two others that don't seem to be getting the attention they deserve.
Sunday, March 06, 2016
Break the bank
1. One line of evidence for God's existence involves examples of special providence. This might include modern miracles and answered prayers. Likewise, there are things we will need in the future, but we don't know that in advance. We'd pray for it if we knew we were going to need it. So in some cases God might provide for us as if that were an answer to prayer, because we don't know ahead of time that we need it to happen, and by then it would be too late to pray.
Now in some cases the windfall might be consistent with special providence or luck. Chances are, you will get lucky every so often. Coincidences happen. But I have in mind examples that are highly resistant to naturalistic explanations. Where it's too specific, unlikely, and opportune to be sheer luck.
2. However, "skeptics" discount this evidence as sample selection bias. The distribution is random. It averages out, when you take everything that happens to you into account. For instance, sometimes you get what you pray for, and sometimes you don't. Some people are healed, and some are not. If you only compare healings, it looks impressive. If you add dissimilar outcomes, it all blends into the undifferentiated background. Or so goes the argument.
3. There are, however, at least two major problems with the "skeptical" objection. To begin with, it backfires.
Suppose there really is a pattern. If, however, our sample is too small, then there's no reason to expect a discernible the pattern. If all we have to go by are anecdotes and isolated incidents, then it would hardly be surprising if the pattern entirely escapes our notice, for it only emerges if we have a much larger sample. In that case, apparent randomness is perfectly consistent with a deeper, broader pattern. So the very thing the "skeptic" mentions to show it's really random is the same thing that's consonant with its nonrandomness.
In terms of reported miracles, answered prayers, and other special providences, our provincial knowledge is only skimming the surface. We know next to nothing about what most other Christians experience at different times and different places. So even if there were a pattern, how would we be in any position to perceive it?
To take a comparison: suppose I'm a Martian who's assigned to study human behavior. I see a family of four load the trunk of their car with luggage and drive away. If their objective is to reach their destination, then they will take the shortest route. Depending on the length of the journey, they will drive as far as they can each day. Their route will be determined by the location of motels, gas stations, and the distance between the starting-point and the end-point.
Yet my Martian logic is confounded by their actual behavior. They don't travel in anything like a straight line. They constantly veer off. They may stay in a town or campsite for several days before they resume the trip. To all appearances, their behavior is random.
But from a human perspective we know that's probably not the explanation. Rather, this is typical tourist behavior. Their objective was never to simply reach their destination. Rather, it was always more about the journey than the destination. They are sightseers. They drive on scenic routes. They visit historic towns. Far from being random, their trip is meticulously planned. Where they will go. How long they will stay. Each day is accounted for.
In addition, our Martian can't tell from where they begin what their destination will be. He doesn't know if they plan to drive 50 miles, 500 miles, or from coast to coast. They might head east to west for most of the trip, then turn south during the final leg of the trip. Our Martian observer might have no inkling three-quarters of the way through the trip where their intended destination is. To register the pattern, you need to begin at the end and work backwards.
And it could be the same way with providence. The pattern defies recognition if all you have are isolated data-points.
4. However, the "skeptic" might object that this only shows, at best, how the phenomenon is consistent with either randomness or nonrandomness. Mind you, even if that were the case, it greatly attenuates the original objection. According to the original objection, what we really have is evidence of randomness, once you take all the evidence into consideration. But now the "skeptic" must concede that the distribution pattern isn't evidence for randomness–appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
5. But it's not just parity. As I noted at the outset, what if you have examples of special providence which are not plausibly susceptible to naturalistic explanations? Then that's positive evidence for special providence.
To take a comparison, suppose a group of ten Caltech students or MIT students decide to break the bank. They figure out how to cheat casinos. They do it as a test of ingenuity. Perhaps they hack into the security cameras so that they can actually see the poker hands, and they devise some undetectable signaling system.
They divide up into teams of two and hit five casinos in Las Vegas. The same team never goes to more than one casino, so there's nothing to directly connect the group of ten cheaters.
It doesn't take long for each casino to catch on to the fact that something is afoot. A player is beating the odds way too often for that to be coincidence. Yet these are isolated incidents.
Suppose each casino is ignorant of the fact that four other casinos are encountering the same thing. Or even if they knew it, they have no background information on the players to connect them. Even if they were aware of a larger pattern, they can't account for the pattern. It seems to be random, although there must be some hidden connection.
But their inability to identify the collusion in no way obviates the evidence of cheating in the individual cases. By the same token, even if the distribution of special providences appears to be random, that doesn't affect or cancel out the evidence in specific cases.
Mortality
This is a sequel to my earlier post:
1. Chris Date said:
God had warned Adam that “in the day” he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die (Gen 2:17). The Hebrew phrase translated “in the day” often just means “when,” and needn’t be taken woodenly any more than when one says, “When you eat too much, you get fat.” Had God intended to emphasize that Adam’s death would take place immediately, he might have used the demonstrative pronoun: “in that day” (cf. Exod 13:8). Instead, when God carries out the sentence of which he had warned, that sentence is clearly literal death. Hence he says that “to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19), and he evicts Adam and Eve from the garden so that they will not “live forever,” lacking access to the tree of life (Gen 3:22–23). So mankind fell into mortality.
I'm in nearly complete agreement with this statement. My only disagreement is that I wouldn't say mankind fell into morality. Rather, Adam and Eve were created mortal, with an opportunity to gain immortality for themselves and their posterity–and opportunity which they blew.
2. My bigger is disagreement is that Date makes the aforesaid statement to support this claim:
#2: Scripture consistently teaches that human beings are mortal and will not live forever unless God grants them immortality. This he will grant to the saved, but will withhold from the lost, who therefore will not live forever.
The problem with this claim is that it flounders on a fatal equivocation. Mortality/immortality can mean two different things:
i) The immortality of the body
To be immortal is to be deathless. Mortals die, whereas immortals never die. In this sense, mortality/immortality refers to physical or biological life and death.
ii) The immortality of the soul
To be immortal is to survive death. The body expires and decays, but your personality subsists because the mind is essentially independent of the body.
The soul can't die because it was never alive in the first place. It was never alive in the biological sense. A human soul is not the kind of entity that can expire or decay. It is not a physical organism.
(i) is more of a popular or dictionary definition whereas (ii) is more of a philosophical definition. Now my immediate purpose is not to argue for one or the other. Rather, my point is that death is only an argument for annihilationism if we define mortality in terms of (i), and combine that with physicalism.
3. But there's another problem for Date's argument. He says "I don't, actually, define biological death as equivalent to oblivion." But that presents a twofold problem:
i) If biological death isn't equivalent to oblivion, then how can death count as evidence for annihilationism? You see, Date talks about mortality as if that's evidence for annihilationism. But when he denies that biological death is equivalent to oblivion, how does that support his position? If you don't pass into oblivion when you die, how is death or mortality evidence for annihilationism?
ii) In addition, his denial is nonsensical. By his own admission, Date is a physicalist. And according to physicalism, the mind produces the brain. It's a cause/effect relation. Hence, brain death results in the extinction of consciousness.
It's like a light-bulb that's connected to a power generator. Cut the power and the light goes out.
Since Date is a physicalist, there's no way he can compartmentalize the implications that physicalism has for annihilationism. His commitment to physicalism delimits how life and death can be defined.
The only way to avoid that implication is if God made duplicate bodies, stored on an M-class planet somewhere else in the universe, and at the moment of death, God instantly uploads the decedent's consciousness into the duplicate brain (which presumes a computational theory of mind). Otherwise, there's nothing to bridge the gap between the moment of death and the general resurrection.
Since this duplicate body scenario obviously doesn't happen on earth, it must occur at some extraterrestrial locale. But from what I've read, annihilationists typically reserve the general resurrection for the day of judgment.
Perhaps Date can crawl out from under the desk he's quivering beneath to offer an alternative that's consistent with his commitment to physicalism.
4. Death can either be defined as an event or a condition. In reality, it is both. What is the postmortem condition of a decedent? What condition is the decedent in, given physicalist annihilationism? Answer: oblivion.
5. Let's approach this from another angle. Suppose we could preserve a corpse from decay. There'd be no brain function. Would it be dead or alive according to Date?
Suppose we could digitize a person and store the data, then turn the abstract data back into its pre-digitized form. Would the individual be alive during storage?
Cooking the books
Peter Grice
It seems that the likes of you and "Maul P." live in a kind of fantasy land where physicalists have no idea what physicalism is, and where "annihilationists" don't even define their basic terms like "life" and "death"—which must apparently include top Bible scholars like Richard Bauckham and I. Howard Marshall.
Several issues:
i) I don't mind saying there are some impressive Bible scholars who espouse annihilationism (e.g. E. E. Ellis, R. T. France, I. H. Marshall, Anthony Thiselton, John Wenham, David Instone-Brewer).
However, we need to distinguish between impressive scholars who happen to espouse annihilationism, and scholars who make an impressive case for annihilationism.
ii) Your argument from authority cuts both ways, inasmuch as there are equally impressive Bible scholars who reject annihilationism. So the appeal to authorities qua authority cancels out.
iii) For that matter, there are liberal scholars who think all sides are both right and wrong. They think the Bible teaches diverse eschatologies and anthropologies. You can find annihilationism in the Bible, as well as univeralism, and traditionalism. So they think it's a mistake to shoehorn all the data into a single position.
iv) Finally, due to the era of specialization, a person can have great aptitude for Biblical scholarship, but little aptitude for philosophy. "Conditionalism" is an interdisciplinary field. It's quite possible for a top Bible scholar to have an incompetent grasp of physicalism and dualism. Indeed, It's quite possible for a "world class" Bible scholar to commit basic logical blunders. For instance:
I have few of the skills and little of the knowledge New Testament criticism requires…But I do know something about reasoning, and I have been simply amazed by some of the arguments employed by redaction critics. My first reaction to these arguments, written up a bit, could be put in these words: "I'm missing something here. These appear to be glaringly invalid arguments, employing methods transparently engineered to produce negative judgments of authenticity. But no one, however badly he might want to produce a given set of conclusions, would "cook" his methods to produce the desired results quite so transparently. These arguments must depend on tacit premises, premises the reaction critics regard as so obvious that they don't bother to mention them." Peter van Inwagen, "Do You Want us to Listen to You?" C. Bartholomew et al. eds. "Behind" the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation (Zondervan, 2003), 127.
Some Seldom-Discussed Options For Defeating Trump
A lot of people are suggesting that Rubio and Kasich drop out, given Cruz's good performance in the voting Saturday. (Make sure you don't just look at the end results in Louisiana. Also look at Cruz's percentage of the early voting in contrast to his percentage of the votes cast yesterday.) Cruz does look more promising as an alternative to Trump now, and Rubio looks weaker. However, yesterday's results need to be combined with polling data about what would happen in the upcoming states if Rubio and/or Kasich were to drop out. If Cruz would lose in Florida and Ohio under a scenario in which Rubio and/or Kasich would drop out, whereas Rubio and/or Kasich would win those states if they stayed in, then I think they ought to stay in for now. (And my understanding is that Rubio was expected to win in Puerto Rico today. If so, he ought to at least wait until after that voting before dropping out.) Here's what I'd suggest doing:
Saturday, March 05, 2016
Pope Francis Praises Italy's Leading Abortion-Rights Activist
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/02/pope-francis-doesnt-get-involved-in.html
Note the last paragraph, below, making excuses for what this pope did and did not know. It is countered in advance by Rorate early in the article, saying “And before the typical sycophants say he doesn't know her disturbing, murderous history, he was asked about just that. The pope's response? ‘True, but never mind.’”
Note the last paragraph, below, making excuses for what this pope did and did not know. It is countered in advance by Rorate early in the article, saying “And before the typical sycophants say he doesn't know her disturbing, murderous history, he was asked about just that. The pope's response? ‘True, but never mind.’”
Pro-life leaders expressed shock after Pope Francis praised the "Margaret Sanger" of Italian politics.
In an interview early in February the Pope called former Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino one of the nation's "forgotten greats." Bonino for decades has been known as Italy's most outspoken abortion-rights activist.
In his interview with the Italian daily Corriere Della Serra, the Pope acknowledged that his praise, in which he compared her to historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer, who was the first post-world War II chancellor of Germany, and the famed French statesman Robert Schuman, could be considered controversial.
He noted she has critics but dismissed them, saying, "True, but never mind. We have to look at people, at what they do." He also praised her work and advice in dealing with Africa.
The Pope's remarks surprised church traditionalists.
"How can the Pope praise a woman that is best known in Italy for practicing illegal abortion and promoting abortion?" said Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro, who was until last year the head of the Rome office of Human Life International, reports the pro-life website LifeSiteNews.
Bonino, a leading member of the Radical Party and former European commissioner, is well known for having an abortion at the age of 27 and then working with the Information Centre on Sterilization and Abortion, which was responsible for 10,000 abortions, notes LifeSiteNews.
She entered politics after being acquitted on charges of performing illegal abortions, the site says, and there are photos of her performing abortions using a homemade device operated by a bicycle pump.
Italian politician Luca Volonte, president of the pro-life Novae Terrae Foundation, suggested to LifeSiteNews that the Pope "was not really informed about how much Mrs. Bonino has done in Italy and at the international level to promote abortion and euthanasia."
Friday, March 04, 2016
Scientific progress and stultification
Einstein had a good idea 100 years ago, and we need another one to take us forward. But the approach has to be more investigative than directive. If you try to direct science, you only get people going in the direction you told them to go. All of science comes from people noticing interesting side paths. You’ve got to have a very flexible approach to exploration and allow different people to try different things. Which is difficult, because unless you jump on the bandwagon, you don’t get a job.
Worrying about your future, you have to stay in line. That’s the worst thing about modern science. Fortunately, when you get to my age, you don’t need to bother about that. I can say what I like.
Sin boldly
I'm going to begin by quoting some statements by Arminian theologian Roger Olson:
Few movies have affected me as strongly as the 2011 film “Machine Gun Preacher” starring Gerard Butler as Sam Childers, drug addict turned Christian missionary who takes up an AK-47 for Jesus in the Sudan. Based on Childers’s true life story, the movie raises gut-wrenching questions about Christian ethics and especially whether use of deadly force is ever justified for the Christian. As those who have seen the movie know, Childers joined a mission trip to the Sudan and there encountered children being slaughtered and forced to kill others by the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army. Faced with the opportunity to resist this horror with deadly force, he reluctantly accepted it and became the Lord’s Resistance Army’s worst nightmare. Because of his violent resistance to LRA numerous children’s lives were saved and many more were rescued from child soldierhood.
What advice would Niebuhr give to the Machine Gun Preacher? I think he would congratulate him for daring to get involved in a bloody, messy struggle to save children’s lives but warn him against over use of violence, against vengeance, and against ever believing his cause is wholly righteous and without sin. He would urge him to use only what deadly force was absolutely necessary to save the lives of innocent children and to never think of himself as innocent. He would advise him to seek God’s forgiveness for being involved in violence even though it was thrust upon him and he had little choice given the circumstances. He would remind him that this is a broken world and there is no perfection and violence is always a sign of that brokenness, even when it is necessary. He would tell him to “sin boldly and repent more boldly still.”
I agree with Niebuhr and Gutierrez that Christians, that I, must be open to the call of God to take up power, even deadly force if necessary, to defend the weak, the helpless and oppressed. With Niebuhr I agree that such use of coercive force for any cause is less than perfect, is even sinful, and never something to be celebrated or boasted of.
With great reluctance and admission that repentance is called for, were I in the Machine Gun Preacher’s shoes I hope I would have the courage to do the same as he. And I hope I would remember that even such a just cause is fraught with ambiguity and unrighteousness and requires grace, mercy and forgiveness.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/11/2013-maston-lecture-sin-boldly-christian-ethics-for-a-broken-world/
There are times when we find ourselves caught in a situation where can have no choice but to sin because all the alternatives available are not what Christ commanded in the Sermon on the Mount.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/11/2013-maston-lecture-sin-boldly-christian-ethics-for-a-broken-world/#comment-1132636352
Yes--a grave danger. Which is why I insisted that repentance is always the only proper response when we find that we must do what Jesus would not do or commanded us not to do. It's not license to do whatever we want to do.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/11/2013-maston-lecture-sin-boldly-christian-ethics-for-a-broken-world/#comment-1132619271
To my way of thinking, shaped as it is by the Sermon on the Mount, even self-defense or other-defense using deadly force is evil. But sometimes it's necessary, justifiable and forgivable.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2016/02/is-torture-ever-ethically-justifiable/#comment-2543171328
Yes, in my opinion (as I explained here some time ago in an essay entitled "Sin Boldly: Christian Ethics for a Broken World") some actions are neither ethically purely right or ethically purely wrong but simply necessary. In that case they are justified even if they violate law (God's or man's) and should be forgiven.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2016/02/is-torture-ever-ethically-justifiable/#comment-2543162544
So Olson believes in moral dilemmas. Here's a philosophical definition:
The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what she does, she will do something wrong (or fail to do something that she ought to do).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-dilemmas/#ConMorDil
That's a logical consequence of his freewill theism. God can't guarantee that we will always be in a position where we have a morally licit option. That's because the choices of some free agents create the circumstances to which other free agents must respond. God can't control those circumstances because he can't control the choices which generate those circumstances.
That, however, creates an interesting parallel. A staple objection to Calvinism is that it's unjust, indeed "monstrously" unjust, for God to blame us if we could not have done otherwise.
Yet Olson thinks some Christians will find themselves in situations where they must commit blameworthy actions. Where it's necessary to do something sinful, culpable, evil.
Despite the fact that Christians have no sinless alternative in that situation, they should repent of their necessary action. They should seek divine forgiveness.
Of course, that only makes sense if their actions are blameworthy–despite the fact that they had no blameless options. They are required to sin, and they are required to repent of their sin.
Conversely, you have Calvinists like John Frame who deny moral dilemmas. For him, God has providentially prearranged events so that Christians always have a morally licit option. That stands in ironic contrast to Olson's freewill theism.
The One True Cult
The standard slam against Protestants is that we have so many denominations. You have Catholic apologists who inveigh against "ecclesiastical consumerism" or even "ecclesiastical promiscuity".
That's set in invidious contrast to the notion that Christ established a single visible church–which just so happens to correspond to the church of Rome.
But let's consider a basic problem with that alternative. If you think there is only one church, which happens to be your particular denomination (e.g. Rome), then that commits you in advance to defending that institution no matter what. You are struck with that denomination regardless of what it's leaders say and do. You swear it your unconditional fealty. You become soldiers for your denomination. You will stick up for your denomination no matter what actually goes on in your denomination. If there's only one true church, then it's that or nothing. Rome or bust.
Yes, you may offer throwaway concessions about wrongdoing, but that can never lead to you to question your totalitarian allegiance to your particular denomination. It can never become too bad for you to walk away. It can never become too evil for you to stop defending it. It's classic fanaticism: my church right or wrong. That's because they have no fallback.
We see this in how Catholic apologists respond to the never-ending stream of new revelations about the priestly abuse scandal. Or how they constantly make excuses for Pope Francis. They will not allow anything to shake their faith in Rome. If the pope performed a weekly child sacrifice at St. Peter's basilica, they'd assure you that does nothing to discredit the institution.
Catholic apologists have no moral independence. It's like a stark version of divine command theory. Good and evil are whatever Rome says. There's no external check. Rome itself is the standard of comparison. Catholic apologists have trapped themselves in the unbreakable circle of cultic authority. You can never leave the cult, for the cult-leader defines what is right and wrong.
Unlawful presidential orders
In the primary debate last night, Trump said he would order soldiers to break the law. That had specific reference to waterboarding (or worse) and targeting the families of terrorists.
It should go without saying that a President has no legal authority to order subordinates to break the law. Not only are subordinates not obliged to obey unlawful orders, but they are obliged to disobey unlawful orders.
In addition, subordinates can get into legal hot water if they obey unlawful orders. It is morally as well as legally wrong for a President to put his subordinates in legal jeopardy. And we have examples in American political history of subordinates who become fall guys for Presidential illegalities.
If a particular tactic is currently illegal, and a President deems that tactic to be necessary to combat terrorism, then he should negotiate with Congress to change the law.
Why Ted Cruz's face makes you feel uneasy
For the record, I'd support Ted Cruz if he becomes the nominee. That said, this video has been making the rounds:
Edit: It looks like the YouTube user who originally posted the video has closed their YouTube account. Here is the same video posted on Facebook.
Thursday, March 03, 2016
"Take out their families"
It's hard to keep up with all of the outrageous things Trump says, but one statement of his that continues to get bad press is this: "The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families."
That's been widely denounced. However, it's an example of how critics fail to adequately address Trump's "solutions". Problem is, many supporters probably like what he said. To merely express disapproval simply reinforces their impression that Trump's critics are soft. Trump is prepared to do what's necessary. He will protect us. By contrast, his critics are paralyzed by political correctness.
i) On the face of it, there's a certain logic to what he said. If you wish to deter terrorists, you attack something they care about. Even if a terrorist is prepared to sacrifice his own life for the cause, he will balk at exposing his family to harm. Therefore, you have to hit them where it hurts. So what, exactly, was wrong with Trump's statement?
ii) To begin with, even if that was an effective tactic, military ethics is very important. In a way, ethics is even more important in warfare because the stakes are so much higher. There's a much greater potential or temptation to commit atrocities. Especially in war, we need to draw certain lines.
iii) Apropos (ii), this isn't just airy-fairy idealism. What makes us better than the enemy? What gives us the moral justification to wage war? If we're prepared to do whatever the enemy does, then we're all villains.
iv) What does he mean by their families? There's a sense in which terrorism can be a family business. You can have fathers, grown sons, and adult brothers who are terrorists. Family in that sense is fair game. But if Trump means women and underage children, that's a different issue.
v) Over and above the ethical concerns are logistical issues. Who, exactly, does he have in mind? Does American intelligence have a list of names and addresses for every terrorist family, or even most terrorist families? Presumably, we can't just send a cruise missile or predator drone to the address of every terrorist family, because we don't know where most of them reside. At best, I presume we only know who the leaders are. The upper echelon of terrorist networks. But even in that case, that doesn't mean we know their whereabouts.
vi) If you can't perform surgical strikes to take out the terrorists, then the alternative would seem to be carpet bombing. Kill everyone within a certain radius to make sure you get the terrorists. That gives you a margin.
Here's a problem with that tactic: one justification for defeating ISIS is to protect innocent civilians from ISIS. This is, in part, a humanitarian mission. But unless ISIS members are segregated from the general population, then Trump's proposal is like "destroying the village to save the village".
Kill the body, not the soul
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Mt 10:28).
This is a prooftext for "traditionalists" and annihiliationists alike. It poses prima facie problems for both. But it's more problematic for annihilationism.
i) This is a prooftext for substance dualism. By itself, the Greek word for "soul" (psyche) doesn't mean an immortal, immaterial soul. But here you have a contrastive relation. In the context of martyrdom, executioners can harm the body, but they can't harm the soul. That's out of their reach.
ii) Implied in the passage is the postmortem persistence of consciousness. The body without the soul is dead, but the soul without the body survives. Persecutors can't touch the real inner you. That contrast is essential to the thought. And that contradicts physicalist annihilationism.
iii) This, in turn, involves a second contrast: humans can only harm a part of the person whereas God can harm the whole person. Persecutors only have power to harm the body, but God has the power to harm the entire individual. Hence, we should fear divine judgment more than martyrdom.
iv) Annihilationists lay great stress on the "destroy" part. But why does Jesus begin with "kill," then switch to "destroy"?
a) Because the second sentence envisions a postmortem situation after the body was killed. That's what makes it a postmortem situation. So it would be incongruous to use the same verb ("kill") in both situations. You can't kill a body that's already dead.
But that means Jesus replaces "kill" with "destroy" to avoid superficial incoherence. The shift in verbs isn't meant to convey a major conceptual distinction. Rather, he changes the verb to make it more consistent with a postmortem situation, as well as divine judgment of the entire individual.
b) Likewise, you can kill a body, because it's a physical organism. But you can't kill a soul, because it's not physical, and it's not "alive" in the biological sense of the word.
c) Moreover, the image of destroying a dead body in hades is figurative. It's not as if dead bodies are teleported to hades. In reality, bodies are buried, and undergo progressive disintegration. In reality, it's the separation of body and soul, when the soul finally "leaves" the body, that causes or results in death. So we're dealing with picture language, as if the embodied decedent passes into the netherworld.
(Although it's possible that this alludes to the general resurrection. But the passage is too terse to confirm that.)
v) Furthermore, the body/soul language is a merism to express the fact that God punishes the entire individual.
vi) Hence, the passage is consonant with the traditional view of eternal punishment.
vii) Taken by itself, the passage is consonant with dualist annihilationism. That, however, requires the cumbersome idea that God recreates the bodies of the damned in order to destroy their bodies (along with their souls) all over again.
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