Life is a gift, not a given

Yesterday, on Facebook, Gregory Shane Morris posted the following back to back quotes:

[If I met God] I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? 

– Stephen Fry 

[When I was an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too-- for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality–namely my idea of justice–was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. 

– C. S. Lewis

To which I responded:

i) Lewis is using a good transcendental argument. 

ii) That said, there's a more direct response. It's true that God could eliminate cancer. Problem is, eliminating certain natural evils eliminates certain people in the process–whose existence is dependence on the existence of natural evils. 

Just about every life has a snowball effect. Take a child who dies of cancer. Say he goes to heaven. Say the parents create a "replacement" child. The replacement child wouldn't exist if his older sibling hadn't died young. So his untimely death results in two lives–his own life and the life of his sibling. That's a good that wouldn't happen in a cancer-free world. Tragedies can be a source of good.

A child dying of cancer is undeniably tragic, but atheists consider that in artificial isolation, yet human lives aren't compartmentalized. Consider a few alternate timelines. In one timeline a boy doesn't die of cancer. He grows up, marries a girl, and fathers three children by his wife. And they in turn marry when they grow up, and have kids. 

Conversely, suppose he dies from cancer at age 10. That girl doesn't marry him. She marries someone else, and has kids by a different husband. So there are winners and losers on either scenario. 

Or suppose the boy doesn't die of cancer. He has a great-grandson who kills a pedestrian in a drunk driving accident. Had the boy died in childhood, that person four generations down the line wouldn't be killed by a drunk driver who was the boy's descendent.

In a fallen world, you have goods that are nested in evils. For God to remove that evil removes the attendant good. That may be a better world in one or more respects, but a worse world in one or more respects.

iii) Untimely death underscores the fact, as nothing else can, that life is a gift, not a given. 

Alternative fact

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/0745646670/R3S8J04EJUD84Y/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_1?ie=UTF8&cursor=1

Political speech in churches

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-faqs-the-prohibition-on-political-speech-in-churches

Huns and Canaanites

A stock objection to the Bible is the divine command to execute the Canaanites if they didn't self-evacuate. Atheists make a big deal about this, even though atheism has no basis for human rights. You also have professing Christians who either agonize over this command or simply deny it. 

Here's a striking comparison:

Some of us were sickened by Sir Arthur’s unrelenting ferocity. But our feelings of revulsion after the Dresden attack were not widely shared. The British public at that time still had bitter memories of World War I, when German armies brought untold misery and destruction to other people’s countries, but German civilians never suffered the horrors of war in their own homes. 

I remember arguing about the morality of city bombing with the wife of a senior air force officer, after we heard the results of the Dresden attack. She was a well-educated and intelligent woman who worked part-time for the ORS. I asked her whether she really believed that it was right to kill German women and babies in large numbers at that late stage of the War. She answered, “Oh yes. It is good to kill the babies especially. I am not thinking of this war but of the next one, 20 years from now. The next time the Germans start a war and we have to fight them, those babies will be the soldiers.” After fighting Germans for ten years, four in the first war and six in the second, we had become almost as bloody-minded as Sir Arthur. 

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/406789/a-failure-of-intelligence/ 

I'm not suggesting that ipso facto justifies the carpet bombing of civilian population centers, or the OT command to execute the Canaanites en masse. But it does show how personal experience can dramatically affect or alter our moral intuitions. 

It's easy for people living in peacetime, writing from the safety of their laptops, to decry OT warfare. Lots of cheap virtue signaling on OT ethics. 

But for people who've been ground down by cycles of war, who've buried their own children because an enemy won't relent, they understandably have a very different outlook. 

Carpet bombing

Freeman Dyson's firsthand account of WWII:

The history of the 20th century has repeatedly shown that strategic bombing by itself does not win wars. If Britain had decided in 1936 to put its main effort into building ships instead of bombers, the invasion of France might have been possible in 1943 instead of 1944, and the war in Europe might have ended in 1944 instead of 1945. But in 1943, we had the bombers, and we did not have the ships, and the problem was to do the best we could with what we had. 

While the attacks on oil plants were helping to win the War, Sir Arthur continued to order major attacks on cities, including the attack on Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945. The Dresden attack became famous because it caused a firestorm and killed a large number of civilians, many of them refugees fleeing from the Russian armies that were overrunning Pomerania and Silesia. It caused some people in Britain to question the morality of continuing the wholesale slaughter of civilian populations when the War was almost over. Some of us were sickened by Sir Arthur’s unrelenting ferocity. But our feelings of revulsion after the Dresden attack were not widely shared. The British public at that time still had bitter memories of World War I, when German armies brought untold misery and destruction to other people’s countries, but German civilians never suffered the horrors of war in their own homes. The British mostly supported Sir Arthur’s ruthless bombing of cities, not because they believed that it was militarily necessary, but because they felt it was teaching German civilians a good lesson. This time, the German civilians were finally feeling the pain of war on their own skins. 

At last, at the end of April 1945, the order went out to the squadrons to stop offensive operations. Then the order went out to fill the bomb bays of our bombers with food packages to be delivered to the starving population of the Netherlands. I happened to be at one of the 3 Group bases at the time and watched the crews happily taking off on their last mission of the War, not to kill people but to feed them. 

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/406789/a-failure-of-intelligence/

How The Gospels Compare To Other Ancient Biographies (Part 2)

(Part 1 can be read here.)

How other biographers writing in circumstances similar to those of the gospel authors viewed their work:

As Aune notes, "while biography tended to emphasize encomium, or the one-sided praise of the subject, it was still firmly rooted in historical fact rather than literary fiction." Ancient historians such as Tacitus thus felt free to draw on biographies as well as annals and memoirs....

Even in biographies, most writers felt free to record negative as well as positive features of their protagonists, when appropriate. Thus, for example, while Suetonius' Vespasian is mostly adulatory (a striking contrast to his biographies of Caligula, Nero or Domitian), he reports his pecuniae cupiditas, love of money....Plutarch, too, knows how to criticize even his favorite figures at times....

In both cases [works written on the Roman emperors Galba and Otho within a few decades of their death], synoptic comparisons among such works reveal that the key biographers viewed their role as adapters of historical information rather than as free inventors of stories. (16-7, 38)

One of the points that's made often in the book is that the gospels are closer in time to their subject (Jesus) than most ancient biographies were:

The canon and the Parousia

http://michaeljkruger.com/did-early-christians-believe-that-jesus-would-return-in-their-own-lifetime-implications-for-canon/

Will you miss me when I'm gone?

One of the many virtues of the Christian faith is the value it places on human death. Atheism necessarily trivializes human death. According to naturalistic evolution, human death is a natural and inevitable feature of the lifecycle. We are merely physical organisms. We mature to the point where we can make and raise our replacements. After that, we've outlived our usefulness. Death is something you should just accept. 

Christianity rebels against the naturalistic acquiescence to death. Yet because death is so "normal", it still takes an effort to retain the sense of outrage in the face of death. A couple of statements by Gary North on the death of his son:

Our children bury us. Most of us do not bury our children. I know of no greater blessing in the modern world. It is a blessing not known throughout most of man's history. Be grateful for it. We take it for granted. 

We do not normally bury our children. They bury us. So, we regard our relationships with them as permanent for us, though not for them.

What Gary says is true, but overlooks something. Of course, he's discussing grief from his own perspective, which is natural. Yet Gary had four kids, including an older son. 

In the age of modern medicine, that means siblings expect their relationships with each other to be nearly as permanent. Indeed, because one sibling normally predeceases another, those who die first had brothers or sisters in their entire lives right up until the end–just like parents who predecease their kids. 

It's not just Gary who lost a son he expected to be a part of his life until the father died, but an older brother who lost a younger brother he expected to be a part of his life until one of them outlived the other–in old age. Indeed, because siblings are a generation younger, we expect to have them in our lives long after we lose our parents. That's a kind of "gift" that parents give to their children. After your parents are gone, you still have your siblings–assuming you had a brother or sister.  

Of course, siblings vary in their degree of attachment. For instance, Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland were not on speaking terms for nearly the final forty years of their lives. The lost opportunities are so sad.

I had a cousin who died as a teenager. He developed bone cancer in junior high, and died in high school. He didn't die from cancer, but complications due to therapy. The radiation destroyed his respiratory system.

I saw his older brother give the eulogy at the funeral service. His brother could barely get through the eulogy. The loss was so wrenching.

Imagine if his younger brother was restored to life, forty years later. What would his older brother do with him? His younger brother would still be a teenager, while his older brother would now be around 60. A husband, father, grandfather. 

My point is how death disrupts relationships. Not just the abrupt dislocation, but the fact that we normally go through life together with siblings. Grow up together, a few years apart. Come of age a few years apart, marry a few years apart, have kids a few years apart. Go through the phases of life one step behind the other. So much in common.

If your prematurely deceased brother or sister were to miraculously come back to life, forty years later, you could no longer relate to them on the same level, because they're now so far behind you. Like they were frozen in time. Stepped out of the time capsule. It's too late to pick up where you left off. Too much water has passed under the bridge. The untimely demise of a siblings is irreparable in that additional sense. Nothing in this life can fix it, even if they came back to us, years later–as if nothing happened to them. 

When your child dies

Gary North is an intellectual showoff. But the death of his son ripped off the mask: 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/02/gary-north/caleb-north-rip/

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/02/gary-north/child-dies/

Last Holiday

Some movies deal with fatalistic themes. One example is Final Destination (2000). Another example is On the Beach (1959). Aussies, as well as an American submarine crew, have survived the thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the USA. However, the survivors know that radioactive fallout will overtake them. They are doomed. 

A third example is Titanic (1997). After the ship strikes the iceberg, the designer questions the crew on how many bulkheads were punctured. Below a certain number and the ship will stay afloat. But above a certain number and the ship will continue to take on water until it sinks. And, of course, that fateful threshold was crossed.

Now that, in itself, wouldn't be cause for panic, but the ship only has enough lifeboats for about half the passengers. The rest will freeze to death in the icy waters. 

What's interesting about fatalistic themes is how they probe what people do who lose hope in the future. That's an acid test of values and character. 

And although these are fictional examples, they have real-world counterparts. Take someone who's diagnosed with a terminal illness. How will he (or she) cope? What will he do with the remaining time?

Alec Guinness made a fine film on that topic: Last Holiday (1950).

An enforced winnowing process to decide what's important in life. Indeed, people shouldn't wait to be diagnosed with a terminal illness to ask themselves how they'd reprioritize their lives if they were given 6 months to live. That's something people should normally ask themselves. Otherwise, they fritter away their lives in frivolous, ephemeral activities. 

How The Gospels Compare To Other Ancient Biographies (Part 1)

(This will be a five-part series. I'll put up a post with links to all five parts the day after I post the final segment.)

Late last year, Craig Keener and Edward Wright published Biographies And Jesus (Lexington, Kentucky: Emeth Press, 2016). It's about how the gospels fit within the genre of ancient biography. (There's an appendix on memory and oral tradition, which is distinct from, but relevant to, the main subject of the book.) There are more than a dozen contributors, some of them scholars and others doctoral students. The book carries endorsements from Richard Burridge, James Charlesworth, Helen Bond, Craig Evans, and David Moessner. Keener's chapters are the best, and the book is worth getting for those chapters alone.

In this post and others to follow, I want to quote some highlights from the book and add some observations of my own. Since the book is so lengthy (about 350 pages without the indexes and such and 450 pages with them) and covers so much ground, I'll only be discussing a small percentage of what's addressed there. I'll often quote a sentence or paragraph that summarizes a point, even though there's more of an argument and more documentation in the book. I'll be citing the relevant portions of the book without identifying which author wrote each portion.

Secret tradition

Of the beliefs and practices whether generally accepted or publicly enjoined which are preserved in the Church, some we possess derived from written teaching; others we have received delivered to us "in a mystery" by the tradition of the apostles; and both of these in relation to true religion have these same force…We are not, as is well known, content with what the Apostles or the Gospel has recorded, but both in preface and conclusion we add other words as being of great importance to the validity of the ministry, and these we derive from unwritten tradition…Does not this come from that unpublished and secret teaching which our fathers guarded in a silence out of the reach of curious meddling investigation?…What the uninitiated are not even allowed: to look at was hardly likely to be publicly paraded about in written documents?…In the same manner the Apostles and Fathers who laid down laws for the Church from the beginning thus guarded the awful dignity of the mysteries in secrecy and silence…This is the reason for our tradition of unwritten precepts and practices, that the knowledge of our dogmas may not become neglected and contemned by the multitude through familiarity (§66). On the Holy Spirit: St. Basil the Great (Popular Patristics Series Volume 42), Stephen M. Hildebrand, trans. (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2013), 133-136. 

This presents an alternative to sola Scriptura. What's striking about it is Basil's explicit appeal to secret tradition. His justification of secret tradition. Traditions that are transmitted through covert channels. Only church authorities are privy to that "mystery". 

But an obvious problem with sub rosa tradition, with a process that's deliberately shielded to public scrutiny, is the fact that there's no check on fabricated dominical or apostolic traditions, or legendary embellishment. Imagine the unbridled power that confers on church authorities. They can stipulate dominical or apostolic pedigree for a particular tradition, and if you refuse to credit that tradition, then you are rebelling against God himself. 

Compare that to Scripture, which is a public record. In the early church, moreover, there was no controlled transmission of Scripture. Christian scribes informally produced copies of the Bible. It wasn't possible for church authorities to modify Scripture, to slip a fabricated dominical or apostolic tradition into the text of Scripture, for the chain of custody was in the public domain. The early church didn't have the centralized command and control to alter the record of Scripture. Individuals might attempt that, but would be unable to universalize their additions. Scripture presents a common frame of reference, precisely because that was in writing, and the transmission wasn't coordinated. 

To take a comparison, suppose you were a 1C Christian member of a church in Asia Minor that St. John planted. Suppose you sat under his teaching. You'd have a duty to remain faithful to what he taught you, to the best of your recollection.

Now, to change the hypothetical, suppose somebody tells you, "This is God's will!" And you ask, "How do I know that's God's will?" And he says, "I sat at the feet of St. John, and here's what he said!"

That's a very different situation. If you submit to his claim, that person has absolute power over you. He's virtually God's mouthpiece, via his claim to be reproducing St. John's teaching.

But, of course, it would be very convenient for a heretic to adopt that imposture. By contrast, 1 John supplies a public frame of reference. That's available to Christians generally. Indeed, St. John wrote it for popular consumption. Every Christian with access to 1 John has the same standard of comparison. 

White identity

It's my impression that alt-right support for Trump reflects, at least in part, a backlash against the anti-white, anti-male ideology of the liberal establishment–even though the liberal establishment is dominated by white male thinkers and powerbrokers. This has been brewing for a long time. Take the Bakke case from the 70s.

And I think there are some legitimate grievances. The white guilt, check your privilege tactic has no traction with me. Likewise, I'm not ashamed to have a Y chromosome.

I'm a critic of Muslim immigration, and I'm a critic of illegal immigration–largely due to the drain on social services. But those are the only immigrant groups that concern me–for different reasons.

The problem is a reactionary policy. Overreacting to something wrong is just another wrong in the opposite direction. 

Take white nationalism. Bracketing the moral issues, there's this myth of white identity and solidarity. As if whites ipso facto have more in common with each other than they have with other ethnic groups. But that's silly on the face of it.

To begin with, you have many children of immigrants who become thoroughly acculturated into American society and the pop culture. 

In addition, we've had different ethnic groups rubbing shoulders in America since the Colonial era. That's nothing new.

But there's also this myth of a white culture that caucasians naturally relate to. Yet that's a wild overgeneralization. How much to Mark Twain and Henry James have in common? How much do William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald have in common? How much do Johnny Cash and Nelson Rockefeller have in common? How much do Billy Graham and Willard van Orman Quine have in common? How much do Clint Eastwood and Susan Sontag have in common? Or J. Gresham Machen and Andy Warhol? Or Eudora Welty and Robert Mapplethorpe? And so on and so forth. 

Likewise, there's a basic divide between highbrow culture buffs and lowbrow culture buffs. It's not as if the average white American has a taste for Quattrocento art, German Lieder, and the novels of Anthony Trollope. 

To take a different example, when I attended high school, back in the 70s, David Bowie was a big rock star. And appearance wise, you can't get more Aryan than Bowie. Yet his gender-bender image was naturally repellent to any normal American boy in the 70s. 

To take another example, it's my impression that traditionally, Italians didn't identify as Italian, but as Sicilian or Lombardian or Ferranese. In other words, identity was more regional than national. Likewise, I think that traditionally, a German wouldn't so much identify himself as German, but, say, Bavarian Catholic. By the same token, even though Austria and Germany have so much in common, many Austrians did not appreciate the Anschluss–even though they couldn't denounce it in public or do much about it. 

To my knowledge, Mussolini was fairly popular until he made a pact with Hitler, resulting in Nazi troops stomping around Italy.    

It's wholly artificial to posit a generic white culture that white folks in general relate to. That never existed. And it never will. 

Milo

If we were living in normal times, Milo Yiannopoulos is somebody I'd do my best to know nothing about. However, given the melee at Berkeley, I decided to watch Tucker Carson interview him. 

I think I first became aware of him during the Gamergate controversy. I also have some peripheral awareness of him in connection with Ben Shapiro. 

From what I can tell, Milo is basically an opportunist. He probably values Dionysian freedom. Beyond that I doubt he has a serious political philosophy. 

I'm guessing what makes him tick is that he's an aging homosexual. That fosters a carpe diem outlook. He's been able to tap into a segment of the youth culture, but his hipster appeal is threatened by the fact that once age catches up with you, that constituency will turn to someone younger and prettier. Age-wise, he's already at the outer limits of that market niche. Kinda like thirty-something actors who play teen dramas. You can only keep that up for so long. 

What's mainly of interest is another front in the culture wars. It's not secular progressives v. social conservatives, but secular progressives v. the alt right, or manosphere, or overlapping groups. 

It's a clash between different groups, all of whom are alienated from "traditional" values. To some degree, Christians are watching this civil war on the sidelines, because it's basically a fight between competing secular factions. 

One dangerous development is leftwing goon squads got up in black fatigues like the Fedayeen, physically attacking people who show up to hear Milo, Ben Shapiro, &c. Why don't the police arrest them? 

The alt right is a toxic mix of white supremacism and antisemitism, with a dash of chic Nietzschean rhetoric, yet it's no worse than the social justice warriors for feminism, transgenderism, ecoterrorism, euthanasia, &c. Pick your poison. 

ISIS Defectors

https://philosproject.org/new-book-fails-convict-isis-islamic-heresy/

A Wind in the House of Islam

http://www.denverseminary.edu/resources/news-and-articles/a-wind-in-the-house-of-islam/

America First

Trump ran on an "America First" platform. I don't know what he means by that. We'll find out, based on what he actually does, or attempts to do. 

His slogan (which doesn't originate with him) raises the question of whether it's good or bad for a US president to have an America First policy. 

i) Obama is a self-hating American. He used to go around the globe, apologizing for American history and foreign policy. He presumed to speak on behalf of Americans generally. 

One problem with his groveling behavior is that he typically issued these apologies to countries with hideous human rights records. 

ii) America First doesn't imply that America is better that every other country. Rather, it's a statement of priorities. The job of an American president is to act in the best interests of his constituents. He's an elected representative of the American people. He's supposed to work for their benefit. 

iii) And that's a viewpoint which other heads-of-state are supposed to assume in reference to their own countries. The Scottish Prime Minister should have  Scotland First agenda. And so on and so forth.

iv) Nationalism doesn't imply that you think your country is the greatest country on earth. I don't think any one country has all the best things. 

However, some countries are definitely better than others. Some countries are horrible places to live. There are superior and inferior cultures. 

v) Putting national self-interest first doesn't imply an imperialistic outlook, where you conquer and subjugate other countries for their natural resources, to enrich your own country. And what's good for your own country may be good for other countries as well.

vi) America First doesn't imply isolationism. For instance, countries often enter into formal or informal military alliances. Take information sharing between the intelligence agencies of two countries. That can be mutually beneficial to the national security of each country. 

Fishing for spiritual compliments

On the internet I sometimes see people post a "prayer request" like this: "Please pray for me that I will be more patient and understanding with others. If I've been too harsh with anyone, please forgive me. If I've offended anyone, please forgive me"–or words to that effect.

But if you think about it, this statement doesn't own up to any particular wrongdoing. It's generic and hypothetical. So it has the fringe benefits of a confession without having to confess anything. A cost-free, public commercial for how humble the person is. The "prayer request" doesn't actually admit to any specific sin or objective wrongdoing.  

I think it would be best for people to desist from statements like this. They aren't really prayer requests. If anything, it's more like fishing for spiritual compliments under the guise of a confession or prayer request. 

Class on NT textual criticism

http://www.alankurschner.com/2017/01/31/i-have-one-opening-for-my-class-new-testament-textual-criticism/

Neil Gorsuch belongs to a notably liberal church

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/02/01/neil-gorsuch-belongs-to-a-notably-liberal-church-and-would-be-the-first-protestant-on-the-court-in-years/