It's been a long time since I've felt as though I had anything to say here, which I regret. The following is a lightly edited comment that I made on Kirby's blog, which I believe is worthy of further development.
Kirby,
The question of authority is something I wanted to take up, and run with a bit.
Sounds like a plan...
If I might anticipate your thoughts a bit, let me start by positing that divine authority, and only divine authority, will not fail. Note that for atheists, this reduces to the simpler premise that all authority fails.
A corollary, which requires the additional premise that we are not gods, is that all human authority fails. This is one of the foundations of Nuremberg prosecution: as all human authority fails, you can't evade personal responsibility for your own actions via appeal to authority. You are responsible for the choices you make in the authorities you follow.
A core problem for those of us who accept the theological premise “God is,” and therefore believe that there is an infallible authority, is in discerning and interpreting that authority. For some, this question is mooted by God himself by direct revelation, but very few have been given the gift of standing with unshod feet before a bush that burns but is not consumed. For the rest of us, it is not so easy, and the very real phenomenon of false prophesy means that we can't simply take the word of those who claim the gift of direct revelation. Even the disciples doubted. We're again confronted with the premise that all human authority fails, and that prophets are human.
Turn now to scripture. Scripture has passed through human hands, and it is established beyond all doubt that the transmission of scripture, while remarkably good, has been less than perfect. Fundamentalists will cite 2 Timothy 3:16-17, All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (NRSV) as an internal proof text for scriptural infallibility, but this is a weak argument. Fallible sources often claim infallibility, but all human authority fails. In any event, it is very far from clear that the intended meaning of θεόπνευστος — God breathed — is anything like what fundamentalists mean when they use the word “inspired.” Ironically, they're not being literal enough in their reading of a central proof text.
The existence of variant texts is certainly clearer to us than it was to the reformers, who were inspired by finally having direct access to imperfect, but original language, texts, and so were in a position to call into question readings of the Vulgate, and arguments for the infallibility of the RCC hierarchy that had been built upon them.
So I see the claim of “scriptural infallibility” as well as “papal infallibility” as theological versions of the Nuremberg defense, resting on the same error. Human authority cannot be trusted blindly, since all human authority fails.
What then? Do I deny all human authority, or claim exemption from its demands upon me? By no means. We all depend on authority, and are subject to its demands. I am no exception. But we cannot use authority to evade personal responsibility, and therefore authority must be tested. And indeed, for this, I can cite scripture as well, for it often speaks of testing by both God and man to ascertaining righteousness, faithfulness, apostolic authority, etc.
Returning again to scripture, we might ask what its uses are. If we test it against the claims of 2 Timothy 3:16, useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, it passes, albeit with a few caveats. If we test it as a source of scientific knowledge, it often fails. It is our personal responsibility if we ignore the results of those testings, both where it succeeds and where it fails.
Peace
46 comments:
There has to be some shades between Infallible, and Fallible.
It's hard to put your finger on.
Castro: fallible.
Kim Jong-Il: more fallible.
Pol Pot: Totally wrong.
Nixon: Usually right, but not always.
Reagan: generally right.
Obama: generally left.
Luther: almost always right.
Stalin: right, in some ways.
Mannerheim: totally right.
Kirby,
I don't think there is a need to distinguish between infallible (always correct) and fallible (not always correct), but certainly there are degrees within the notion of fallibility. E.g., "usually correct" and "usually wrong" are clearly distinguished within fallibility.
My experience is that human authorities cover much of the ground within fallibility — some are almost always correct, which is to say life-giving. Some are almost always wrong, which is to say, life-denying. But none are always correct.
And the idea that Obama is leftist is looking increasingly untenable. Indeed, I think we're past the day when it can be reasonably said that he's even center-left. That died with the rebate on social security taxes.
I agree, and the thing is you never know I suppose if you're always wrong.
Kim Jong-Il doesn't know.
Hitler didn't know. He should have asked him men to retreat back to Germany and form a wall around Berlin.
But he didn't know and there was no one to tell him.
Judgement, especially in judges, and in choosing them, and in sentencing, is always suspect.
Huckabee's one wrong judgement is probably enough to make him unpresidential.
If Jesus was human, could He have ever made a mistake?
Kirby,
If Jesus was human, could He have ever made a mistake?
Of course, Jesus was fully human. As well as fully divine. Given that he is the union of such opposites, I think it is problematic to guess where scripture (or perhaps tradition) are mute. Could/did Jesus ever make a mistake? As fully human, he must have. As divine, he couldn't have. It is a mystery, and there are limits into how far we can delve into a mystery as great as this.
I'm curious what you think Huckabee's one wrong judgment was.
Huckabee's bad call was to release on parole the guy who ended up killing all those people south of Seattle.
As for Jesus, yes, the whole thing is beyond my call in terms of second-guessing His Judgment. I, personally, would probably nevr have gone to Jerusalem in the first place.
Huckabee's bad call was to release on parole the guy who ended up killing all those people south of Seattle.
I'm dubious of a Huckabee presidency, but this just doesn't bother me. State prison systems are overcrowded, a consequence largely of criminalization of crimes against one's self (drug use, possession) and an unwillingness to invest in expansion. Governors get called upon to pardon a criminals as a way of relieving pressure on the system, and generally speaking the prisoners who get free have been vetted by the prison system's psychologists, social workers, etc. They do a pretty good job, but the occasional psychopath gets through. Dukakis had Willie Horton, Huckabee had Maurice Clemmons. I'd score the Horton situation as worse from a governance point of view, even though Horton's crimes were less -- Horton had been furloughed, and had not returned from furlough. His failure to return from furlough was indicative of his unsuitability for release, and greater efforts should have been made to track him down and re-incarcerate him. But Clemmons had been free for nine years after his pardon, which is quite a long time.
Pretty much anyone who's served as governor is going to be carrying the same sort of baggage. Palin's the exception, but in a way that proves the rule. Murkowski (her predecessor) did a lot of last-minute pardons, and Palin served only a short time, presumably before pressure could build up again.
I'll bet that the case will be made against him just the same, and few on your side will let him off so lightly as you have done.
Willie Horton did do in Dukakis. Maurice Clemmons will do the same for Huckabee.
It is amazing that one mistake like that can wreck a career.
It's almost better to jump in without much of a record as Obama did, or as I presume Sarah Palin will do shortly.
Minorities and women were denied authority for a long time. Now they get it almost by default irregardless of any actual accomplishments or sense of judgment. So I assume that the nation will suffer under that reversed bias for the next forty years or so.
Kirby,
I'll bet that the case will be made against him just the same, and few on your side will let him off so lightly as you have done.
That's not the way it's going to play out. Huckabee has to get through the primary before the general. This issue will be tested in the primary, and he still wins the republican nomination, it will be ineffective in the general.
Time will tell.
What are people looking for in a president?
They keep saying, he or she must be presidential.
As if the term defines itself.
It's certainly about authority, intelligence, style, grace under pressure, etc.
But no serious errors of judgment, too.
I didn't inhale.
I did not have sex with that woman.
The helicopters into Tehran.
IRan-Contra.
Watergate.
We don't want someone who will embarrass the office.
The same thing would hold true with pastors.
The symbolic role of authority must be played by someone with gravity, but not too much.
Humor is important, too.
But it can't be endless silliness ala Caligula, either.
It's hard to get it right.
And now in particular we are trying to extend the category horizontally to women, and people of color, and your denomination to sexual minorities, as well
It's an interesting time.
Hey Stu.
If we test (scripture) as a source of scientific knowledge, it often fails. It is our personal responsibility if we ignore the results of those testings, both where it succeeds and where it fails.
An important point overlooked by dogmatists, whether WASP or catholic or jew, who often forget that the men who founded this country did not in general hold to infallible views of the Bible, but were closer in thinking to scoundrels such as Hume or Voltaire (Jefferson kept a bust of Voltaire in his study at Monticello his entire life). Jefferson especially seems particularly aware of the negative aspects of Ad Auctoritas in any form (including the catholic and muslim)--a point KO tends to overlook regularly when he insists that Jefferson and Locke are like part of his fundamentalist agenda.
Some intelligent skepticism--even of the Humean sort--does not necessarily imply complete doubt. One upholds say, the Beatitudes--or at least respects them-- and much of the Bible because of the moral message--but realizes the facts of evolution have falsified the traditional account of creation given in Genesis (thats not to say it falsifies the metaphorical aspects).
J,
Good to hear from you.
the men who founded this country did not in general hold to infallible views of the Bible
Of course. One wonders why today's neo-anderthals are so smitten with the Constitution, a document written by heathens, as if it were a new revelation.
And yeah, Jefferson was one part skeptic to one part syncretist. And this doesn't even getting into screwing his slaves. Hardly the model of a Christian life. But Jefferson at his best was something of an Engels to Locke's Marx. So either they have to re-invent him as a humble believer, or their heads will explode.
Some intelligent skepticism--even of the Humean sort--does not necessarily implies complete doubt.
Indeed. I'd go even further. Intelligent skepticism allows a more mature, more robust faith.
Madison, yes, Jefferson, no.
Constitution, yes, Marx, no.
Faith, yes, skepticism, yes.
Neanderthals, yes, homo sapiens, yes.
The Founders were all different in their degree of Biblical sapience, and this in turn changed throughout their lives, as it does for all of us.
People down on their luck tend not to have as much faith as those who are doing well.
Some will hold their faith through everything, but they become exemplars, like Job: a Herculean faith is what he exudes.
Christ Himself.
The Doubting Thomas is of course another kind of fellow, where skepticism demands the empirical, and yet there is a tradition that the Indian state of Kerala was first missionized by this fellow, who apparently abandoned his doubt, at least according to local sources in that region.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find any enthusiasm with regard to Jefferson on my blog or elsewhere. He wrote beautifully, but Madison is the one I like the best.
There may be ad hominems against him and what he did as well in his life, but I like that Bill of Rights thing. I know the liberals just want their latest whim to set the course of things, but conservatives do tend to want to look back at little things like law, which in this country is founded on the Constitution, rather than on the lil' Red Book, or whatever the ELCA's Bishop Hanson has been smoking this week.
(which isn't to say that some things you might smoke might not lead to a more robust faith.)
KO's usual facile generalizations. Madison was at least the rationalist and freethinker that Jefferson was--probably more so. See the Remonstrance, for starters--in ways a precursor for the 1st Amendment. Or the Federalist papers, which have little or no theological content. The Federalists were against the "enthusiasts"--ie, the Hucklebees of their era--
And not too supportive of Calvinism either.
Anti-Federalists were sort of the biblethumpers, and considered the Federalists Tory bluebloods. Or yankees. Lutherans were sort of german/swede immigrants--mostly farm boys, probably . Not that numerous. Franklin says something critical about them.
The point being that the early America was not Fundamentalist in the modern, baptist sense--that happens after the Civil war, really. Perhaps the puritans were in places, but that was mainly New England--it was rogues of all sorts elsewhere. And Boston even pre-Rev had freethinkers and catholics (taigs, as the WASPs called 'em).
Hmm. I don't know anything about Madison's religious commitments. Wiki says "unknown," which leans me to think J's contentions on the subject have merit.
Lutherans were sort of german/swede immigrants--mostly farm boys, probably . Not that numerous.
My ancestors were indeed German farm boys/girls, working the fertile soils of Lancaster and Northumberland counties in Pennsylvania. Good people: hard workers, good managers, faithful.
Still, I've found claims that 1/3 of the US at the time of the revolution was german speaking, and these would likely have been divided more-or-less evenly between Lutherans and Catholics. So we're at 1/6th, a far larger proportion than holds today. Not a small number, but probably unimportant politically because they tended not to get involved.
Franklin says something critical about them.
Couldn't find it, don't doubt it. Germans generally fight for governments, not against them. They wouldn't have been natural allies. And of course the Brits used German mercenaries, which likely didn't help.
I agree with Kirby that people's views change, but not with his application of it -- you can't make a heathen into a Christian saying his viewed changed over his lifetime, when the range of views was pretty well contained within the heathen region.
OK. I didn't intend to insult Lutheran folks, stu, and you may be right about the Deutsch language--at least in Penn., Ohio that probably held. Actually you don't run into many out west--a few Mennonite families were in Central Valley--perhaps Pasadena area (the "-denas" are swedish I believe--many dairy men). Once or twice I've....I've actually attended a Lutheran kirk-- a Bach-thing, and quite cool. The icicles and snow maidens especially. :]
These days the fundies consider the Lutherans suspect, I believe--"marians," like their catholic forefathers.
Madison was Episcopalian, but he had sympathies with the Baptists who were banned from holding state office in Virginia, which is why the first amendment bans Establishment of religion as a test of state office. Episcopalians had done that.
It's still done in many places.
In Cuba, you have to be a member of the Communist PArty.
In Myanmar you have to be a Buddhist.
That's illegal in the US, but not because Madison didn't stand to benefit from it, it's because he thought it was wrong. He had studied under Witherspoon at Princeton and had picked up a lot of the Augustinian ethos from him with regard to being fallen. Madison had this much more right than silly Jefferson who was a kind of proto-Unitarian.
He studied for the ministry under Witherspoon -- an Augustinian and Presbyterian.
http://www.adherents.com/people/pm/James_Madison.html
Jefferson identified his friend as a theist, but Jefferson was a glib sort: his ideas often appear out of nowhere. I think he was busy with many other things in the slave quarters. He's the beginning of the Democrats and "I did not have sex with THAT WOMAN."
J,
OK. I didn't intend to insult Lutheran folks, stu, and you may be right about the Deutsch language--at least in Penn., Ohio that probably held.
No worries. I wasn't insulted. I know the farm folk -- two of my uncles and one cousin are still there. Good folk.
Actually you don't run into many out west
Probably right, although we didn't have any trouble finding a Lutheran Church in Denver. There are three within a two-mile radius of my daughter's house -- two ELCA and one LCMS.
I've actually attended a Lutheran kirk-- a Bach-thing, and quite cool.
We like it, although most Lutheran churches are bringing in a mixture of music, some Bach, some more contemporary. The liturgy is pretty much the same, though.
These days the fundies consider the Lutherans suspect, I believe--"marians," like their catholic forefathers.
No doubt. There are literalists (the LCMS bends that way, and there are more conservative Lutheran churches still), but they don't dominate. Mostly, it's just good solid folks, not easily excited, faithful to their faith and one another.
Kirby,
Madison was Episcopalian, but he had sympathies with the Baptists who were banned from holding state office in Virginia, which is why the first amendment bans Establishment of religion as a test of state office.
Now you're reminding me, and I think this is not quite right. Madison attended an Episcopalian Church, but not entirely regularly, and he was never a member, and there are doubts IIRC as to whether he was baptized. I assume he didn't commune if he never accepted membership.
I think the question is still open, but I'll consider evidence.
No, KO's off the mark once again: in the Remonstrance, Madison opposed all the virginia Christians who wanted a religious oath taken by all office holders. He was taking on Patrick Henry and his allies. That developed into the First Amendment and was an issue for the ratification of the US-Con. Mad. may have been nominally an Episcopalian but also opposed military chaplains, even late in life--for that matter, he was Jefferson's ally for the most part and opposed to Hamilton/Federalists after the Ratification of the US-Con. Some fairly...skeptical quotes of JM can be found online.
Let's not leave US History to the Fundies either, or else it'd be something like baptists and presbyterians vs the pagan hordes.
(interestingly enough "Pasadena" comes from Ojibwa/Chippewa , but was chosen by a white settler. Regardless many swedes lived in the area).
Now you want to throw out the Constitution and the character of the man whose ideas it contains.
What's next?
first KO Non sequitur of the AM.
No one's throwing anything out. You're the one who regularly invokes theocracy, contra 1st Amendment. Im for Constitutional principles, for the most part (like Due Process, overlooked daily by the right-wing). And the US-Con was not a matter of one person's character. Moreover Madison was not a particularly religious person. He was probably the least religious of all those old pettifoggers--rather Hobbesian, actually, as one notes reading the Fed. Papers. (then, not sure there's room for the Fed. papers on yr shelves, full of beatnik classics, Hallmark haiku collections, Bible, Book of Mormon etc).
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Guten Morgen Stu!
Actually Hume's arguments contra-miracles were part of the Founders' criticism of "scriptural inerrancy". Sort of cold and rational, but believers should be aware of them, IHME--as you are probably. Jefferson eliminated all references to miraculous/supernatural events in his abridged New T. TJ was def. aware of Hume and the french encyclopedists.
In a sense Hume does make a case for Induction...in his essay on miracles, per the uniformity of experience, and considering alternative explanations to supposed supernatural events. He sounds rather Newtonian. It was a big issue in those days--whether to accept the testimony of scripture or any religious text. Edward Gibbon didn't.
A lot going on...
Kirby: Now you want to throw out the Constitution and the character of the man whose ideas it contains.
This is a characteristic over-reaction. I say that something's not white, you jump up and down and yell, "He said it's black!" There's a useful concept here: it's called grey, and there's a heck of a lot of it between white and black.
I see the US Constitution as having some excellent ideas as to how to organize a government: basing governmental authority on the will of the people; the parsing out of governmental responsibilities into legislative, executive, and judicial branches; the varying terms (2 years for a representative, 4 years for a president, 6 years for a senator, lifetime for a judge); the system of checks and balances; the explicit limits on governmental powers. But the Constitution enshrines some terrible ideas too, largely but not entirely driven by slavery: the 5/9ths rule, the apportionment of the senate by state rather than by population, the appointment system for judges, etc.
It is possible to look at the Constitution with open eyes, and to recognize both its strengths and its faults. Indeed, at this point there have been 27 amendments to the Constitution, amendments which both alter the document, and become a part of it. The existence of amendments, and the fact that from time to time additional amendments are proposed, is an internal argument against Constitutional infallibility.
Likewise with historical figures like Jefferson. Hagiography has its place, but so too does historical honesty. A problem with hagiography of the founders is that it seems to place them as demi-gods, creatures of far greater wisdom than we can hope to achieve in this fallen times. This is a false view, to say nothing of a dangerously unchristian view, and we're better off without it. The Constitution is not the received Word of God. It is a valuable working document that reflects (for better and worse) more than 200 years of the experiment and experience of the American Republic.
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Separately, I'd like to reflect a bit on Madison, and his religious character. I don't expect this to be the final word on the subject, just a point for pushing off against both Kirby and J.
It seems to me that Madison had a "personal" religion. Clearly, he valued the moral teachings of the Episcopalian church. Very likely, he was a deist (i.e., he believed in God). It's not clear whether he was trinitarian or unitarian. Certainly, Jefferson was unitarian in the "lower-case u" sense, as essentially all syncretists are. As far as I can tell, the dominance of trinitarian Christianity within the larger stream of Americans who read the Bible (including NT) and believe in God is an artifact of the second great awakening, and this is largely post-Madison.
It's also clear from Madison's writings that he was very much opposed to religious hierarchies, which he tended to characterize as self-advancement rackets for the clergy. This is a fairly mainstream point of view in America: I believe in God, but not in organized religion. (And for Kirby, no this is not my point of view.)
Part of Madison's early experience was an abortive foray into ministerial education. It's not hard, given Madison's later life and writings, to retroject the idea that Madison entered the path to ministry out of a desire to form and build up community, and abandoned it because he came to believe that ministry would not be useful to that end, but that governmental service would be.
Madison waffles a bit, but like the other Federalists, he essentially defends......Caesar. Jefferson for all his faults , doesn't, but respects the ethical message of the New Testament (well, JC's message--not the pseudo-gospels of Paul and Romans 13--which Locke hisself had questioned).
For that matter, the US media has dumbed down Jefferson for years, turned him into a fiddle-playing plantation owner, or...indulged in hagiography of a sort. He was no saint but compared to say, Napoleon or 20th century tyrants (including religious ones), he doesn't seem that sinister, even with the Hemmings affair. The character-obsessed American conservative yokel (and...or overly PC leftist) can't see beyond Jefferson's flaws and understand his message ..or his vision. The Founders' rationalism--while hardly equal to that of say, Descartes-- doesn't appeal to links... oder rechts.
I see Jefferson as a species of Romantic, and to be full of the belief in the People. I think Madison distrusted people, and is therefore RESPONSIBLE for the checks and balances of our government.
That distrust is itself evidence of his belief in the fallibility (fallen-ness) of mankind, a Calvinist or at least Protestant concept. This is why I place Madison among the Protestants. That he studied with Witherspoon is something verifiable.
Later in his life he did move toward an agnostic position (I don't know why he did this, but most people wax and wane with regard to their faith, and he did, too). Jefferson on the other hand got a bit more faith (I also don't know why).
Neither was God on earth, but at least Madison knew that (Obama doesn't) which is why the document is so valuable. It is precisely why the balance of powers is so valuable and why we have to keep contemporary Pelagians off of it.
We do need rationality, but we also have to understand the emotional nature of people, and how they err. Descartes was rational, but not in any useful way in terms of thinking about government. Put Descartes before the whores, and he would not have retained his rationality or had anything much to say.
Madison or Jefferson were not the intellectual peers of Descartes (who is, or was?) but they had more experience of men, and women (especially in the latter's case) and knew what they were dealing with. This is why we have to keep academic creeps like Obama and his ilk out of the Constitution. It's precisely because academics have so little experience of what people are really like, and are way too romantic about what can be achieved.
The Constitution is a pessimistic document as is the Bill of Rights. That's why it's good. What is needed is a check against the optimists and the romantics who always screw everything up.
Luther, too, was a pessimist (with big hopes). Luther knew what he was dealing with. Which is why Luther lived, and why Lutheranism is so lively, and life-giving, even when it has been kidnapped by the optimists and Pelagians, as the ELCA has been (68ers all).
The Framers, Jefferson included, understood the potential dangers of democracy, tyranny of the majority, so forth. That was on the table so to speak, as it was in Locke's political writings-- Locke claimed, contra monarchists and statists, that citizens shall have the right to petition the government, ie vote. Something like rights, Kirby--disliked by monarchists, or maoists. That could still result in problems--a majority could vote in a ...Sarah Palin. Or a mob of sans cullottes might start cutting off the heads of nobles, clergymen, etc. But rather superior to kings, royals, or judges making all political decisions--kings are fallible. Scalia's fallible, and probably not much smarter than a high school algebra teacher.
The Federalists at times sounded like they preferred the old monarchy and aristocracies (how Christian is that?), or at least the roman senate--yet Madison had by the time of Jefferson's presidency actually joined Jeff.'s faction-- the democratic-republicans, against Adams/Hamilton. So he wasn't as opposed to Jeffersonian democracy as you suggest, tho' he sounds more in favor of the senate and executive power than the House/Congress (and..honestly, probably about as hypocritical as Jeff.--they were 'baccy farmers, for one (tho. the Jeff. boys planted other crops as well).
Jefferson also insisted on proper education--public education-- as to avoid a mob rule. He wasn't a romantic ala Bonaparte.
That said, ...your cynicism itself might be read as ....not too Christian. For that matter, your role model Luther had no problem siding with the princes and generals when it was time to arrest and execute Munzer and his rebels--and one might say, political turmoil, chaos, disorder don't really help out the traditionally religious, but hint at something like the problem of evil (or unmerited suffering, etc)--however obvious. Many christians helped out Hitler...and orthodox with Stalin for that matter.
Lutherans have both hope and a certain realism. In my case the realism means that people are 98% fallen, but there is about 2% grace left over from the fall.
I don't know if anyone else would put this into numbers or if they did whether they would assign the numbers in the same distribution.
But 2% seems like a ton of hope judging from how things go, especially when people get really sickeningly hopeful as they do when the communists are about to take over, as they are our own government.
I can't say how it would mean anything but the same monotonous monotony that you find in Cuba today, or in Pyongyang. Without the safeguards of the Constitution, there's no reason we wouldn't end up there in about ten years max, with the whole nation being in a de facto Gitmo ruled over by our dear leader with the ml kingly demeanor.
You've got to be one of the phoniest pious frauds to be found online, KO.
Dostoyevsky did not presume to judge who belonged to the "Elect" and who didn't. He preferred the company of hardened criminals to the sunday schoolers of his time.
Re Authority...
What about the supposed authority of politicians--potential presidential candidates at that--who put up posters with Democrats in crosshairs?? Palin and teabaggers, and the NRA-at-any cost conservatives have done exactly that. While I don't love say Jane Fonda (or Democrats, really), her comments don't seem completely unwarranted: the loudmouthed rabble-rousing of Palin, Glenn Beck, Rev Hagee, et al was a causal factor in this tragedy (lets not forget a Fed judge was killed as well).
A borderline nut such as this Jared person (that is, assuming he did it... Consumerland does not know for sure), seeing Palin or Ted Nugent-like antics, hearing the Foxnews hysteria, and also reading Mein Kampf, or Ayn Rand (one of KO's regs occasional gurus) could just snap, grab his semi, and enter McVeigh-land. And that's what has happened.
You lied again, Stu.
You claim to be about Truth and Justice--and Reason.
Yet ended up chiming along with Kirby and his klan palsies.
That's boy a cheap, lying fraud--incapable of formal logic--not to say a loud moralist bore.
He's going down, ASAP.
J,
You lied again, Stu.
I did not. Before or now. I'm surprised and disappointed that you believe I did. I've argued a consistent position with faith and honesty. As much as I dislike your tone in this note, I'd like your reaction to my posting on why I believe. I don't expect you to agree, of course.
You claim to be about Truth and Justice--and Reason.
Yet ended up chiming along with Kirby and his klan palsies.
I very much doubt that Kirby belongs to the Klan, nor that he's racist. If you've been hanging around, you've may have noticed that I argue with him a lot too. I hope I've made my points to both of you with courtesy and respect, although I'll admit to throwing the occasional elbow at Kirby's ribs if I think I can get a laugh out of it.
Let me say that I don't see these venues as being about picking friends and enemies and then simply having at it. I see them as venues for discussion. I can't think of a single commenter that I haven't agreed with in part, and disagreed with in part.
That's boy a cheap, lying fraud--incapable of formal logic--not to say a loud moralist bore.
Logic is not Kirby's forte. So what? Logical ability isn't common. He has his blinders, and his virtues. As we all do.
He's going down, ASAP.
Threats are only a way to increase mutual paranoia, not a way to win friends or respect for your position. They are extremely counterproductive, and I ask you to refrain.
Not a physical threat (besides, he's too cowardly and small to respond to say...a challenge, like mano a mano, legal, in a ring so forth). I meant career wise.
I was polite the entire time, even when being insulted, subjected to ad hominem, having my points disregarded, etc. The inerracy debate may seem dull or trite to some--it wasn't at the time of the ratification of the US Constitution. Hume's not my fave thinker, but one deals with the arguments, instead of character assassination (even Kant did that). I don't think KO even understands the problems.
And Im not the only one who has noted racist elements to Olson's blog/writing. He can't be blatantly racist --so he does it..slyly (or attempts to). AS with "Obama and his homies." Or his regular comments disparaging hispanic people, and on spanish as a "border language". I could point out many more instances.
Lets not forget Olson approved of..Pat Robertson's bizarre comments on the Haiti quake, ie "they deserved it." He blesses the likes of Beck and Limbaugh.
Res ipsa loquitur
J,
Not a physical threat (besides, he's too cowardly and small to respond to say...a challenge, like mano a mano, legal, in a ring so forth).
Good. Best to be clear on such things.
I meant career wise.
From my perspective, there's much more to be gained by engagement than scorched-earth approaches.
I was polite the entire time, even when being insulted, subjected to ad hominem, having my points disregarded, etc.
Let me tell you what this looked like from my position. First, you raised some good points. The first time you raised an issue, I tried to respond (e.g., on the problem of evil). Then you'd re-raise the issue, seemingly without reference to my earlier reply. I don't see much virtue in repeating my defenses -- the argument is out there. Second, you push very hard on the philosophical literature, with which I'm far less familiar. Couple this with a general stance on my part that prefers to engage arguments over authorities, and I didn't have much to say.
The inerracy debate may seem dull or trite to some--it wasn't at the time of the ratification of the US Constitution.
Actually, I think that inerrancy is a bigger deal today than it was then. Much of what we see in the evangelical right today is a reaction to science. Before the challenges of science, religion was much more relaxed about interpretation, and very "literal" translations didn't get much respect. And here, I'm basically talking about the 1400 years from Origen/Eusebius to Gallileo.
As for the founding fathers, many of them were in the deist camp, much as Einstein was later, with a proto-religious belief in a distant, not-historically involved creator god.
And Im not the only one who has noted racist elements to Olson's blog/writing.
I think Kirby is a bit conflicted. Part of his background is as someone who was forcibly bussed from a high-functioning, white dominated school to a low-functioning, black dominated school. This is going to leave marks on anyone's psyche. At the same time, I don't see race per se as an issue for Kirby, but instead cultural correlates of race.
Lets not forget Olson approved of..Pat Robertson's bizarre comments on the Haiti quake, ie "they deserved it." He blesses the likes of Beck and Limbaugh.
Yeah, and I challenge him regularly on the subject. So it goes.
I still think Pat Robertson had a wonderful point about Haiti. If a great majority of a country are involved in voodoo, everyone is so busy watching their own back that next to nothing else can get done. Most recent report on Haiti is that Port-au-Prince has been besieged by a criminal element that is even more vicious than the lawlessness prevalent in Mexico.
Pat Robertson and his 700 Club is always worth watching. They see the moral climate of a country as the real news that remains news.
Brother, are they right!
Kirby,
I'm certainly not inclined to grant Pat Robertson many points. Here, I think a "yes, but..." response is called for.
First off, I think we need to grant the point that cultures can have dysfunctional aspects. There's likely to be less agreement as to which particular aspects qualify. E.g., for J, Christianity is dysfunctional, whereas for Robertson, the absence of Christianity is dysfunctional.
I don't know enough about Voodoo to assess it on a social-utility metric, but in my admitted ignorance, I believe it to be a self-serving religion: one in which the Gods are petitioned, and rituals performed, solely for the direct benefit of their adherent. Religions like this (and I'd include a veneration of Adam Smith alongside of voodoo, and I'll note that GHWB made exactly the same claim in exactly the same language) seem to me to be intrinsically less functional that systems (like Christianity) that have strong communal elements.
But I'd also note that the viciousness of Haiti's criminal elements today can't be explained based on voodoo, which after all has been endemic for the past 150 years. If voodoo were the explanation, the criminal element would have been that bad before, and while it was bad, it was not that bad. No, to explain characteristics of Haiti today that are different from those of a few years ago, you have to look at what's changed, and the Haitian earthquake comes screaming to mind. This has taken a nation that was already at the brink of social, economic, and ecological collapse and shoved it over the edge.
Let me wrap this up. Robertson's claim that Haiti quake is a consequence of voodoo is a logical consequence of his belief system, but I believe is entirely incorrect, and comes close to putting him into the Fred Phelps category. But if you water this down a bit, and argue that the adverse consequences of Haiti's earthquake (and indeed, of its impoverished pre-quake state) have been exacerbated by a pervasive dysfunctional religious system, then I think you've got a plausible argument.
Res ipsa Loquitur, once again.
Robertson's a tinhorn biblethumper and jingoist. Then so is Olson. Small minds think alike.
Let me wrap this up. Robertson's claim that Haiti quake is a consequence of voodoo is a logical consequence of his belief system, but I believe is entirely incorrect, and comes close to putting him into the Fred Phelps category.
Something like that Stu. Even if one objects to Haitian corruption (and superstition)--as I do-- that in no way justified Robertson's insinuations that G*d somehow punished Haiti with the quake. It's nearly totalitarian to suggest as much. Soon, we'll probably see Olson blog something on LS in favor of Fred Phelps.
Scroll through his latest rants, and note the usual pat generalizations and pundit-speak. Red state, blue state. GOP vs Dems. So much for Reason.
KO's sin is not merely irrationalism, however. It's...pride--Pride, the never failing vice of fools.
The second claim was Robertson's claim, so you're granting him "a plausible argument." As am I.
Adam Smith, by the way, is also communal in some ways. He does argue for compassion for the poor, and notes quite carefully that the division of labor is good for business, but, if your life consists of sharpening the end of a nail thousands of time a day, that it is impoverished from the viewpoint of variety and charm.
Smith actually had a brain. Some Smithians not so much.
You don't mean Adam Smith, economist, the student and friend of...David Hume, opponent of religious zealots (including protestant ones), who denounced ...Christianity while a student at Oxford ? (at best he was a Deist). No you couldn't mean that Adam Smith, for he would have a belly-laugh at Rev. Robertson as well, as Smith and Hume laughed at the calvinists circa 1760 or so.
Smith's notion of the "invisible hand" was not based on Christian charity either, but on...self-interest. Like Hume, Smith had read his Hobbes (and Aristotle et al). Smith's a product of the Age of Reason and of no help to fundamentalists ( I believe Wesley called him a scoundrel, along with Hume, and others).
Maybe stick to Hallmark, Kurly
Hmm. Robertson claimed that Haiti had made a "pact with the devil," and the earthquake was "God's punishment." This is easier for me to call up via Google than via my own fallible wetware.
So while Robertson may have made the second, arguable claim, he also made the first one. Which is indeed Phelpsian. Not surprising, but not excusable either.
I score this immediate dispute on points for J. Robertson did indeed say some incredibly offensive things which can only be condemned. But it doesn't seem to me that Kirby buys the "strong Robertson thesis" regarding Haiti, but instead a "weak Robertson thesis," which I might frame as "Haiti's endemic voodoo has made a bad situation worse." This is plausible, and indeed, I'm inclined to believe it is true.
As for Phelps, he has come up in the past, and Kirby's shown no tolerance for his antics. For one thing, while Kirby has a traditionalists belief that homosexuality is sinful, he's been pretty clear that he doesn't have an ontology of sinfulness. In his mind, it's no different (better or worse) than coveting your neighbor's wife. Kirby has had homosexual friends and indeed, one of his poetic mentors was homosexual. This willingness to separate sin (as he perceives it) from the the sinner (which we all are, by both Kirby's theology and mine) strongly distinguishes him from folks like Phelps, who limits his discourse with gays to screaming "GOD HATES YOU!" at them.
I just did a google search for "God hates" in Kirby's blog, and found 8 hits. Some of these are "God hates sin," most of the rest are direct references to Westboro. In this regard, I found the following comment by Kirby in the "Gayness and Poverty" thread:
Nambla you hear about all the time on Fox, but when you listen to Fox too much you might never hear about Westboro Baptist Church.
Oh la la!
I was actually quite offended by the site, and it took me several hours to recover from it and to try to find my bearings. What I couldn't understand is how they decided that homosexual activity is the one thing that God hates most.
I think all crimes are equal in the eyes of God.
This seems decisively non-Phelpsian to me, even if it is less liberal a position than I (or J) might take.
Hmm. I'd like to note for the record that I wrote my last post before reading J's latest.
Really I don't have an axe to grind with KO (though he seems to think so--part of his delusions)--more like pity, than hatred. He's the one seething. Nor am I atheist (as he wants to suggest. Call people who disagree with you atheists, and voila, no need to argue any longer). Years ago his writing amused me at times, until he started praising the likes of RObertson and Foxnews.
My latest comment doesn't seem that much Stu. KO routinely invokes men like Smith, Locke, Jefferson who were in no way sympathetic to religious orthodoxy. Not that I worship a Jefferson. He was deeply flawed (tho hardly a Napoleon level tyrant). But ...well...to me there's something mistaken about the mishmash of religious zealots with the gents of the Enlightenment--his Limbaugh-like writing has little to do with the cool Reason of a Smith, Locke or the FOunders. Nuff said for a while.
J,
My discomfort with your previous note comes from (1) referring to Kirby as Kurly, which seems to me to be an ad hominem mashup of Curly from the Three Stooges and the Klan, and (2) characterizing Kirby as fundamentalist, which I think isn't quite right. Religiously conservative, sure, but they're not the same. I see Kirby who is more inclined to literal readings of scripture than I am, but not as someone who is a committed literalist. He's taken the public position that he's uncommitted on evolution vs. creation, and uncomfortable that the LCMS states creationism as a doctrine.
I don't believe you've denied atheist before, although it's certainly not a label I'd have applied. I've got you provisionally classified as a skeptical seeker, coming from a Catholic heritage, but that covers a lot of room. If you deny atheist, do you embrace deist? theist? You're not obligated to commit yourself, but it would help anchor some of these discussions if we had more substantial points of presumed agreement to start from.
"""If you deny atheist, do you embrace deist? """
In a sense, yes. I believe Mind exists--not exactly Cartesian --more akin to ...neo-Aristotelian(though not to say I accept RCC dogma, or all the mysterious talk about essences, etc). Logos is not tossed aside lightly .
I oppose fundamentalist protestants but object to Dawkins-esque like atheist scoffers and moronic reductionists also (like these perps, some of the most sinister people to be found online). They're cousins actually. Dawkins is like a Falwell, IMHE. A bit smarter but the same sort of mind--anglo-calvinist.
I don't have a problem with Evolution, as long as it's not used as psychology or social darwinist, as this perp "sky" and his mormonc crony "byronius" use it. Amusing some mormonics now think they can be Darwinists.
I actually respected Dr. Behe's arguments for Intelligent Design, at least in pointing out the shortcomngs of Darwin, who was no bio-chemist. His arguments are rather subtle. But I never claimed IDT should replace evolution in a classroom. That's how the reductionists think--what you . say students should read Behe, or the Arguments from Design?? Why you're... a creationist! No, that's just rationalism. Considering all sides. Even the intelligent religious side (rather than dogmatic).
Actually my theology, Stu--a bit manichean. Evil exists. But most Humans go to Hell, where their souls are annihilated (don't ask where--then much of modern physics now accepts parallel dimensions, does it). 95% of WASP_mormon-zionists will. Approximately!
Stu, just wanted to thank you for reading my blog carefully.
Just because Robertson is reprehensible on occasions (who isn't?) doesn't mean that he can't occasionally contribute something to a conversation.
He opened up a very strange scenario at Haiti's inception (the troika of revolutionary leaders sold themselves to the devil in exchange for freedom, according to him). You wouldn't hear that anywhere else. Is it true?
I'm not sure. difficult to establish it beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Easier to establish the overwhelming use of voodoo in Haitian culture.
There are three major kinds of voodoo but each one requires a sacrifice. Please note that human sacrifice is the kind their gods prefer most.
(This is quite clear in Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological account entitled TELL MY HORSE, which is based on her own anthropological investigation into voodoo and ends with a LIVE HUMAN SACRIFICE.)
There are three major god groups -- one is based on Baron Samedi -- you get power but lose all your friends.
The second is based on Erzulie, a sexual love goddess. You get sexual love but are constantly dealing with terrible jealousy.
The third is Baron de Bois -- you get material security but are a bit bored.
With values like these, why does Haiti even need an earthquake to level it? they've already leveled themselves.
There is a certain kind of Biblical literalist who believes that storms (Katrina, for instance) was sent by God to punish New Orleans, or that earthquakes amount to the same thing.
I'm not going down that road, but do think that values have to care about the society as a whole, in addition to individual happiness and woe be it to any society that goes down the road of Sodom & Gomorrha.
AIDS rates in Haiti are VERY HIGH.
The superwealthy seemingly care nothing about the superpoor.
The place is corrupt from bottom to top.
They need to sit down and rethink their values, and probably in order to get anywhere they'd need the help of about a hundred thousand Protestant missionaries.
Pathos, Sir Stu.
Pathos is the typical intellectual error of populists, whether tinhorn biblethumpers (ie Robertsons, Hagees, KOs), or ...emotionally-driven pseudo-liberals.
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