Conscience and its enemies

http://www.c-span.org/video/?324708-7/book-discussion-conscience-enemies

Herr Justice Kennedy

"Justice Kennedy: The Rule of Law Requires You To Enforce the Laws I Made Up" by David French.

Robert George interviews Ted Cruz

I'm not posting this to recommend Cruz for prez, per se, as much as to highlight an intelligent conversation between two public intellectuals over Constitutional, civil liberties, bioethics, same-sex marriage, and other issues most pertinent to Americans:

Trump on Muslims

Trump constantly makes rash brash comments that he doesn't really believe. Take his statement about Muslim immigration. Notice how he begins to bob and weave when questioned:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/12/07/fox-grills-trump-on-anti-muslim-plan.html

He always talks off-the-cuff. When he's grilled on his careless, hyperbolic statements, he immediately starts to amend them off-the-cuff. 

He's that way about everything. If he builds a casino, it will be the biggest and best casino that ever was. Only it won't be. If he builds a golf course, it will be the greatest golf course that ever was. Only it won't be. 

He doesn't take the issues seriously. He doesn't take his own statements seriously. He only takes himself seriously. 

Incestuous relationship between terrorism and the state

Regarding a proposed moratorium on Muslim immigration, Chris Christie said:

What we need to do is to increase our intelligence capabilities and activity both around the world and in the homeland. We need to back up our law enforcement officers, who are out there fighting this fight every day, give them the tools they need. We need to cooperate with peaceful Muslim-Americans, who want to give us intelligence against those who are radicalized. We did this after 9/11. And it was a very impressive approach. I can tell you in New Jersey that we frequently had sources inside mosques in New Jersey that were giving us information that helped us to bring cases and intervene on things that we otherwise wouldn't' have known about.  

https://mobile.twitter.com/ChrisChristie/status/674000605510283264/photo/1

This is classic. It's like what Ike said about the military-industrial complex: Notice the pervasive circular reasoning:

i) We need to beef up domestic surveillance to monitor domestic jihadists. Of course, if we didn't have that gratuitous supply of domestic jihadists, we wouldn't need to expand domestic surveillance to keep apace.  

Consider, moreover, how wide a net must be cast. To monitor any particular terrorist, you must monitor all his contacts. Family, friends, acquaintances. The bank teller. The cashier at the supermarket. Eavesdrop on conversations with everyone he happens to talk to, phone, text, tweet, and email. Keep an eye on the entire apartment complex or condo complex where he resides. And so on and so forth. Think how many innocent people become entangled in these investigations.

Likewise, expand police presence to keep up with the expanding Muslim presence. So the police state and surveillance state move in tandem with the Muslim community. 

Likewise, you wouldn't need Muslim informants to snitch on jihadists unless you had a Muslim community in the first place. And by bragging about the frequency of the tips, notice how that casually grants the extent of homegrown jihadist plots. 

Mind you, here's a very different perspective on how forthcoming they are:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/07/fmr-fbi-counterterrorism-agent-weve-received-nearly-zero-help-from-u-s-muslim-community-since-911/

Life in the tinderbox

I'm going to comment on James White's latest Dividing Line presentation:

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php/2015/12/08/really-tried-talk-stuff-eventually/

It's basically a repetition of what he's said before. Let's start by cutting the dead wood:

i) I, for one, haven't accused him of going soft on Islam or having changed recently. That's neither here nor there as far as my own objections are concerned. 

ii) For someone who accuses his critics of painting with a broad brush, it's ironic to see how all his nameless critics are lumped together.

iii) He repeats the allegation that his critics are hypocritical. But ironically, there's a contradiction running right down the middle of his argument:

On the one hand he says Islam is diverse. Not "monolithic". Therefore, you can't say who's a true Muslim and who's a nominal Muslim. You're not entitled to say Jihadists are true Muslims but moderate Muslims, Ahmadiyya, Sufi, &c. are nominal Muslims. 

On the other hand, he says that just as we have a right to distinguish true Christianity and true Christians from heresies, cults, and nominal Christians, Muslims have a right to do the same thing. If we have a right to deny that Mormons and unitarians are true Christians, if we have a right to deny that Anders Behring and Breivik or Robert Dear are true Christians, then they have a right to deny that a jihadist who gets drunk and has sex with prostitutes is a true Muslim. 

But he can't have it both ways. If he's going to draw a parallel between Christian orthodoxy/orthopraxy and Muslim counterparts, then that means there are boundaries between authentic Islam and nominal Islam.  

If, on the other hand, Islam is so fuzzy that anyone who self-identifies as Muslim should be included, whether it's Sunni, Shiia, Ahmadiyya, Bahai, Islamic modernism, &c., then his comparison with Christianity falls apart. In that event, they're not analogous. In that event, his Christian critics aren't guilty of applying a double standard. 

iv) BTW, why can't a true Muslim get drunk, sleep with callgirls, and go to paradise if he dies in jihad? Isn't that the point? To recast it in terms of Western theology, to die in jihad is a work of supererogatory merit that plenarily absolves you of guilt. You die in a state of grace. That's your ticket to paradise. The Muslim version of last rites or the baptism of martyrdom. 

For that matter, why is prostitution contrary to Islamic ethics, but concubinage is not? What's the moral difference? What about pederasty? 

v) If, moreover, you're not qualified to say what's genuinely Islamic unless you can read the Koran, sunnah, and Hadith in the original, then that disqualifies hundreds of millions of professing Muslims from being true Muslims, does it not? Most Muslims are very ignorant of their religious tradition. Most Muslims can't read classical Arabic. 

White's elitist definition is at odds with his pluralistic definition of Islamic identity. If only Islamic scholars are true Muslims, then only a fraction of professing Muslims are true Muslims. 

vi) Another issue is whether Islam has a core identity. White makes some interesting points about how the Koran is a compilation of traditional sayings, abstracted from their original setting, then edited together. It's the Hadith that supplies the chronology. If it weren't for that scaffolding, you couldn't make heads or tails of the Koran. When and where was it said? What abrogates what? One must sift contradictory sources of dubious historicity. He compares quoting the Koran out of context with quoting the Bible out of context. 

These are valid issues. There is, however, another way of broaching the issue. Instead of a textual starting point, what about Biblical anthropology? If Muhammad was a false prophet, then he was a child of his times. Given our knowledge of fallen human nature, given ethnography, wouldn't we expect Muhammed to be a violent, promiscuous man? Isn't polygamy, concubinage, slavery, military conquest the predictable ethos of that time and place? 

That doesn't depend on which subset of texts you use as your selective "filter." Rather, that's just what we'd anticipate the historical Muhammad to be like. That's what men are like without the restraint of Christian ethics and sanctifying grace.   

Isn't Muhammad's pivotal function as a role-model a part of core Islamic identity? If so, it's antecedently unlikely that he was a hippie monogamous pacifist. Even if our sources of information about Muhammad are fairly unreliable, the sources are very consistent with the kind of man we'd expect him to be. 

vii) Likewise, Muhammad isn't just another prophet, added to the OT and NT. Although Muslims pay lip-service to "former prophets" in the Bible, they don't get that directly from the Bible. Rather, that's filtered through the distorting lens of the Koran. In practice, Muhammad is their only prophet (Ahmadiyya and Bahai are exceptions)

viii) Finally, White bypassed all the security issues. Yet security issues are what's driving the debate. Briefly:

Poll: 68% of Trump’s supporters would vote for him if he bolts the GOP

 As I predicted a long time ago:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/12/08/poll-trump-cruz-rubio-clinton-sanders/76948760/

The candidate who is smart enough to recognize that this election is unlike any other in our history and runs as an independent has a good chance to win.

The candidate who realizes that the Republican party—after stabbing their voters in the back in the last two consecutive historical elections—is dead to many Republicans and bolts for an Independent party will likely win.

The candidate who realizes that the Obama-Democratic party is dead to many democrats but will vote independent will likely win.

Let's see if Cruz or Trump is smart enough to ditch the "we will never support a conservative" establishment RINO party and run as an Independent.

Here is a chance where record numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and other democrats would vote conservative if he were an Independent.

Kill two birds with one stone: A conservative president and the destruction of the RINO party!

The trial and crucifixion of Jesus

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/review/the-trial-and-crucifixion-of-jesus-texts-and-commentary-chapman-schnabel

The amorality of atheism

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-amorality-of-atheism

Apologist for Islam

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/in-the-line-of-fire/53640-president-barack-obama-apologist-for-islam

Obama and the GOP are colluding with the genocide of Christians in the Middle East

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/religious-rights/261304-obama-and-the-gop-are-colluding-with-the-genocide-of

Stephen Carlson's Christmas Material

Stephen Carlson has written a lot of good material on Christmas issues in recent years. I've often cited a 2010 article he published that addresses how we should interpret Luke 2:7 and some issues related to the passage (whether Joseph and Mary were married yet in Luke 2:5, whether Joseph was from Nazareth, etc.).

He's also proposed a new rendering of Luke 2:2 that hasn't gotten much attention yet, but has been endorsed or taken seriously by some scholars who have commented on it. See here. And see here for a discussion of Carlson's response to Richard Carrier on the subject several years ago. I don't know enough about Greek to render much of a judgment of Carlson's proposed translation, but it seems more promising than other translations that are often suggested.

More than a decade ago, Carlson published an article on a passage in Clement of Alexandria that has some relevance to the infancy narratives. See my discussion of the subject here.

Carlson has also published an article on Matthew 1:17 and how Matthew arrived at his count of three groups of fourteen generations.

Bruce Jenner is a woman but jihadis aren't Muslims

Ben Shapiro:

"According to President Obama, this is a woman, but these are not Muslims."

Pyramid of terror

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428146/more-than-few-islamic-extremists

Shadow of Oz

Casey Luskin offers a sneak peek into Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God by Wayne Rossiter.

For it before he was agin it

Nowadays, Trump is taking a rhetorical hard line on jihadism. But just last Spring that he was singing a very different tune:

http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/04/donald-trump-faults-draw-mohammad-event-organizer-for-taunting-muslims/

Bart Ehrman scams his students

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2015/12/bart-ehrman-scams-his-students.html

Crouching at the door

6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:6-7, NASB).

As two commentators explain:

In this understanding the expression reverses the earlier imagery of Cain's "downcast" face. When Cain practices what is right, there will be an uplifted face… K. Mathews, Genesis, 1:269-70. 

"It will be lifted up"–this probably refers to Cain's face, which has fallen. In other words, his countenance will no longer be one of despondency and dejection. However, if Cain continues to do wrong, then sin will hound him–sin is lurking, waiting to pounce. J. Currid, Genesis, 1:145. 

Among other things, this is a reference to depression. To my knowledge, it's the first reference to depression in world literature.

Then there's the additional image. It may depict sin/depression as a predator that's lying in wait on the porch. 

Some commentators think this alludes to the Mesopotamian tradition of a doorway demon. One prima facie problem with that interpretation is the anachronism. If this preserves a real conversation between God and Cain, then there was no such Mesopotamian tradition at the time God spoke to Cain.

In principle, the Mesopotamian tradition could be based on something much earlier. And a demonic presence would dovetail nicely with Gen 3. 

Still, there's nothing in the imagery that implies that. It can easily be taken to be a personification of sin/depression as an ambush predator. The point of the doorway metaphor is that  doors function to keep things out. It marks the barrier between inside and outside. The moment you open the door you either risk letting unwanted intruders inside, or you leave the safety of your shelter to venture out into the unprotected wild. 

Connecting this to the theme of depression, for people who suffer from it, depression is like a crouching predator that waits for you, stalks you. You may shake it off, but you never know when it will return. You may face it when you get up in the morning. It follows you, shadows you, overshadows you. Just when you think you put it behind you it's right around the corner. A very apt metaphor for depression. 

Divine Permission, Asymmetry and Counterfactuals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLqrObYwW-Y&app=desktop

HT: Paul Manata

Zechariah, Jesus, and the Jews

Recently I read the following conundrum:

A second question that I have concerns Zechariah’s prophecy.  Zechariah seems to talk about Messianic expectations that many Jews of his day had: Israel would be saved from her enemies and serve God without fear (Luke 1:71-74).  Zechariah was excited because he thought that his son John had something to do with that.  But that did not happen.  Rather, Israel’s Roman oppressors destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E.  

http://jamesbradfordpate.blogspot.com/2015/11/struggles-with-luke-1-and-possible.html

Several observations:

i) That poses an interesting dilemma. Critical scholars date Luke to post 70 AD. Typically, they date it to 80-100. But if so, why would it include a prophecy that, on one interpretation, was falsified by the fall of Jerusalem? Indeed, critical scholars don't think this is a real prophecy, or something Zechariah actually said. Rather, they think that's fictional dialogue the narrator put on the lips of a fictional character.

But in that case, something has to give. The date or the interpretation of the oracle.

ii) A prophet is a recipient of information about the future. That, however, doesn't imply that he knows when that prevision will come about. He relays what's been revealed to him, but that doesn't come with a calendar date. A prophet has an instrumental role in that regard.

iii) I wonder if one possible answer isn't to assess this by considering what might have been had the Jewish-Roman wars not occurred. An imaginative exercise in alternate history. 

Certainly those wars were devastating for the Jewish people. But they also forced the survivors to scatter hither and yon.

Had the bulk of Jewry remained concentrated in the Levant, how well would the Jewish people have survived the rise of the Byzantine Empire, followed by the rise of Islam? I believe the Byzantines were fairly hostile to Jews. But on top of that was the military conquest of the Levant by the Muslims. 

To the extent that Jews clustered in that general vicinity, they'd be far more vulnerable to genocide. But because they were dispossessed and dispersed well before then, they didn't present such a compact and inviting target.

Seems to me that this is consistent with how Scripture often views things. A short-term disaster has humanly unforeseen benefits in the long-term. To use a metaphor, it reminds me of:

serotiny (adj. serotinous) In certain plants, especially trees (e.g. jack pine (Pinus banksiana), lodgepole pine (P. contorta), and many species of Eucalyptus), the retention of seeds in pods or cones on the tree, often for many years, until a disaster, most commonly the heat of a fire, causes their release. After fire, the seeds fall on ground fertilized by ash in a site cleared of competitors. 

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/serotiny.aspx

iv) Finally, I wrote a NT scholar for his opinion. He wrote back saying:

Actually, with roots in Daniel, the battle here is not just seen against Rome. For Luke the victory is over spiritual forces. Judaism wrestles with a Messiah in two comings where the political victory is later. It does come as Zechariah offers but in two stages. What the OT presented as a single package, the NT has in two steps.