A New Enlightenment?

This blog has been silent for quite a while, but the article from NPR, What the World Needs Now is a New Enlightenment, has gotten me fired up enough to write a response.

First, Gleiser's assessment of the goal of Enlightenment philosophers strikes me as a little off. At least I doubt they conceived of it in terms of multinationalism in the way he suggests. Their goal was to promote the use of human reason above other forms of conceptualizing the world, and they assumed that the capacity for human reason was universal. While I agree that the capacity for reason is universal, this assumption carried with it the assumption that Western ideas of reason were the only valid ones, an assumption I would strongly contest.

            Furthermore, I take issue with "the need to create a global civilization with shared moral values". No doubt, by "shared moral values," Gleiser means liberal Western values. Ostensibly, of course, part of this value system is an emphasis on diversity, but if this value system is to trump all others, then it ultimately collapses in on itself in a rubble of hypocrisy. Better to celebrate and allow ourselves to be challenged by the ways in which the moral systems of other cultures conflict with our own. That, I think, will lead to a more healthy understanding of diversity.

            Finally, in celebrating the importance of the Enlightenment and how it was "far removed from traditional religious precepts", he declares that we need a new one based on "humancentrism", summed up by one of his closing statements, "We matter because we are rare." Does not this ironically echo the attestations of those same "traditional religious precepts" that Earth and humanity must be at the center of the universe because man is the peak of God's creation?

Why do I think the Way I do?

 This post is a bit of self-exploration. In the recent election season, I have been thinking a lot about the divergent views of conservatism and liberalism, what lies at the root of each, and what is positive and negative about each. Mostly, though, I've been asking the question of why I have the biases that I do. Ultimately, those biases are much more liberal than they are conservative. However, this is by no means an attempt to convince anyone that my views are correct, it is rather a self-examination, to try to understand why I think the way I do. So without further ado:

I think there are two major issues responsible for my liberal bias. First, the conservative emphasis on free-market economy translates, to me, as encouragement of profit-driven consumerism, which is entirely against Christian values. Related is a general mistrust of of anyone who values business and profit over people. I don't trust someone who inherited his daddy's business to understand what life is like for someone who lives in a trailer park surrounded by drug addicts and child pornographers.

On the other hand, an alternate conservative narrative is that of the hard-working struggler who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, a narrative which I can relate to. However, this narrative seems to have been co-opted by liberal parties.

The second issue that concerns me about consevatism, indeed it angers me, is an implied necessity for cultural homogeneity. Conservatrism seems to be equivalent to middle- and upper-class white values. This, too, is far from Christian values. Biblically, all man and all cultures are equally created in the image of God, and all reflect that image in some way. They are also all equally fallen, which means that middle class white values are not the only legitimate values.

Moreover, and more deeply-seated, such cultural homogeneity is an affront to my sensibilities as an intellectual, writer, poet and generally creative person. Creativity lends itself to questioning, challenging, and sometimes outright defying the status quo, Conservatism violently defends the status quo, it seems.

These two issues, of profit-focused consumerism on the one hand, and fierce demand for cultural and social homogeneity (which means white middle-class values) deeply disturb me, and I believe they are the source of my bias against conservatism.

There are many other reasons, no doubt, but as I realize them, I can explore them further here on this blog. As a preview, though, one thought that has occurred to me recently has been that both conservatism and liberalism are based on fear. The fear goes in opposite directions, but it is the same for both. Conservatives fear abuse and bullying by the government - but they fear this because it hurst the businesses that fill their coffers. Liberals fear the abuse and bullying of big business and other private sector organizations, and look to the government put reigns on these abuses. I think more exploration of this will have to be another post, however.

Christian and Democrat? Republican?

The thoughts expressed below are in response to a facebook post, which linked to Billy Graham's website, here.

I will take this opportunity to say what I really think. There is no doubt whatsoever that the values Graham mentions are the Biblical truth. Life is a precious gift from God, and it is simply unjust to throw away a life that He put on this planet because of someone's bad decision. Biblical marriage is about God's desire for us to live in community with others (marriage being the most intimate community) and about telling the Gospel story through the parallels with the relationship between Christ and the Church. Marriage, between a man and a woman, is very, very good. Although new at it myself, I see more and more every day how awesome and right His design for us not only to marry, but to save ourselves for the one we eventually marry. I have struggled with sexual sin in the past, though I did, ultimately, save myself for my wife. In doing so, I realize more and more how good God's plan to do that is! He knows what He's talking about, because He's the one who designed our innermost being, with all its desires, of which He is ultimately the fulfillment. So yes, marriage between a man and a woman is good and godly in a way that homosexuality is not. I do believe it is a sin, but I think it is important to remember that God has reasons for forbidding something from us, the reason being that ultimately it will not satisfy us at the deepest level, the way He wants us to be satisfied in Him.

However, there are other Biblical values that Graham in this article and most conservative Christians in their politics completely overlook. The prerogative to care for the poor and marginalized in society is clear not only from the example of Jesus' life (he ate with tax-collectors and sinners, prostitutes, and interacted with many other undesirables of society), but also from the Old Testament. Isaiah speaks throughout of the call to "Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. (Isa. 1:17)" The same idea is repeated in 1:23, 10:2, and even in Jeremiah 7:6, among others. There is, it seems to me, a growing body of young believers who see this and are passionate about actually doing it. They might even vote Democrat to see it happen. I am tempted to go this route myself, but there are some things that concern me.

First, putting our hope in earthly governments is not the answer. Those who tauted Obama as a Messianic figure in 2008 were unquestionably mistaken to do so. But Conservatives seem to have applied just as much of a messianic deification to say, Ronald Reagan. I understand that small federal government is a strong value of conservatives, but they get so impassioned about their candidates and platforms that they often say and do idiotic things because they have abandoned the Biblical value (another one Graham didn't mention, though John Piper does) that this world is not our home. All governments and government officials in this world lie, propagandize, and sacrifice integrity to gain power. That is a problem with partisanship on both sides, but I do fear that liberal evangelical Christians may vote without thinking about the fact that their candidate's words are rhetoric designed to win their vote, which means their promises cannot always be trusted. Republicans do the same thing, but my main point here is the concern that liberal Christians forget this.

The second concern is that conservatives raise a legitimate question: should it be the government's role to "Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow" and all other marginalized groups in society (the homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc.)? I have heard time and again the conservative argument that it most definitely should not - instead it should be the job of churches and charitable organizations, but I can't shake the feeling that this is an excuse to do nothing themselves. Moreover, while government is not the ultimate solution, its powers should certainly, at least in some cases, be levied to address problems of poverty, marginalization, and oppression, but ideally in partnership with churches and charitable organizations. One of the few things I liked about the recent Bush administration was its support of faith-based organizations. That was good, and it was a way for government to be involved and provide some accountability without overpowering those on the ground working for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized.

All this is to say that I believe the only conclusion possible is that there are good, biblical reasons to vote for both parties. It frustrates me that such a term as "the religious right" can exist, at least without a counter "liturgical left" (or maybe something with a much more clever name). I honestly believe that if Christians are following Christ, doing what He would have us do, we will sometimes be on the right, other times on the left in our activism. Neither the right nor the left should be able to absolutely, unambiguously count on the Christian vote. As it is, all evangelicals vote Republican on the basis of only two issues, which might well be solved better by addressing the poverty, oppression, and marginalization that engender them in the first place. Right now, though, all I see is many Christians afraid to do the things that are so clearly Biblical (caring for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized - Isaiah, not to mention Jesus, again). We are afraid of doing these things because they might seem "liberal" and God isn't liberal, no sir. God doesn't give a rat's you-know-what about conservative or liberal, people! He is zealous for His glory and His sheep, many of which He has called and will call from among the ranks of the "undesirables" of society, and we need to be out there reaching them, not sitting in our comfortable pews discussing how Barack Obama or whoever the current Democratic candidate may be is the antichrist (if we must sit in our comfortable pews, at least let it be to hear the word of God being preached and challenging us to get out of those pews and share the love and salvation of Christ with people!)

The point is, again, there are strong, Biblical reasons for voting liberal, and there are strong, Biblical reasons for voting conservative. Regardless of how we choose to vote, though, we should be activists offering the freedom of Christ to, and pleading the cause of, the fatherless and the widow (and the prostitute, and the drug addict, and the homeless, etc, etc) all year round.

The Evolution Debate Continues

I just posted this article on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cosmicfingerprints.com%2Fdarwin-half-right%2F&h=wAQCh7YvgAQAJ9m3p7PuT-us9A712R_0d1Zrzzk2GxF2Yjw I've made comments there about it, but there are a couple of counterarguments that occurred to me, which I thought might be better in a blog post. First, the random mutation generator Mr. Marshall links to and cites as evidence that "noise" does not add information to a structure. However, the use of linguistic information as an analogy to evolution is precisely that: an analogy, and by no means a perfect one. The fault in Marshall's generator is that there is nothing that plays the role of natural selection. Nothing that weeds out the harmful mutations. Of course, he would say, as he does later in the article, that such measures are not "natural selection" but "deliberate selection." But again, this is only an analogy, and simply having random mutations with nothing that serves to play the role of natural selection is ultimately not useful, except perhaps to give us a sense of precisely how unusual useful mutations are. But in the real scenario of natural selection there is a sort of "refiner's fire" that gets rid of superfluous or harmful mutations. There is nothing that even serves as a substitute for this process in this generator. Second, Marshall discusses how there is in fact no question that very beautiful, intricate patterns occur with no interference from a mind: sand dunes, snowflakes, etc. However, putting it that way is theologically incorrect. Precisely because God is a sovereign, personal God, Biblical Christianity would argue that He fashions each snowflake, each sand dune, every thunderstorm, the course of every river, and so on. Yes, these are entirely natural occurrences, but it is God who not only wrote the laws that govern the natural forces which produce these magnificent displays of His glory, but He is intimately involved with them (and us) day by day. There is no easy, scientific way to explain how these can be both completely naturally occurring and intimately designed by God, but nevertheless, Biblical Christianity sees no conflict between these positions.

The Forbidden Subjects

Everyone knows you don't talk about politics and religion. But I've never been a big fan for agreeing with what everyone knows, so here's a blog about both.

I've noticed in my post-college years more and more young, evangelical Christians who are NOT, by any means, Republican. In fact, many of them resent the fact that the Republican party, with often very un-Christian actions and views, claims the name and votes of their religion. These young evangelical Christians are less concerned about pro-life and anti-gay marriage stances than about issues of social justice and poverty relief, among others.

I foresee two possibilities for the future of the Republican party as this group grows, both in numbers and age.

1. The Republican party may, within a generation or two, no longer be able to count so strongly on the evangelical vote as more and more of these young evangelicals become politically and socially active.

2. On the other hand, this group consists primarily of young, single or recently married folks. In other words, people who don't have a lot of net worth or family to protect and provide for. It could be that as they develop wealth and families, they begin to fear the loss of these things, and will find themselves voting more in line with the party that claims to protect these things.

What about you? Have you experienced this apparent growth of more liberally minded Evangelical Christians? Are you one of them? Do you think my characterization is fair? What aspects of your faith inform your politics?

Are you a more "traditional" evangelical Christian who votes Republican? What aspects of your faith inform your politics? Do you think my characterization of you is fair?

Why might it be a good thing for more liberally minded evangelicals to increase in number? Why might it be a bad thing? Why might it be a good thing for evangelicals to continue their support of the Republican party? Why might it be a bad thing?

Creating Languages

Every so often, it strikes again - that quiet, persistent urge to exercise what Tolkien called the "Secret Vice". It started, as so many such things do, in the days of my no-social-life-outside-of-school adolescence. I would lock myself in my room and go through page after page of titillating material. I was creating my own language.

Inspired by the example of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings trilogy had by then become my favorite novel, and by that exotic, tempting leather-bound copy of Latin Grammar I had found and perused at my great-aunt's, I entered innocently into the world of toying with powerful forces I had yet to understand. But they had begun their work of slow seduction, and it wouldn't be long before I became more machine than man, bent on galactic domination...well, perhaps that's an exaggeration. Nonetheless, I had found my calling.

What impressed me about my first introduction to Latin, from that battered book on my great-aunt's shelf, was that here was a language which expressed perfectly well with suffixes what we had to use often clunky permutations of word order to say. I wondered, could there be still another way to express the relationships between words in a sentence? And while we were at it, what about the sounds of a language? These were the two revelations that provided the basic structure of my language, which I originally called Kirkian, from my middle name, eventually settling on a name from within the language, Paijodd, the "high speech".

I wondered if it were possible to use a completely new and different way of defining the relationships between different words. I made it so by deciding that nouns would have a different form to show whether they were related to other nouns or to verbs. There would be suffixes that could be added to these basic forms to specify the relationships further. In this way, a noun inflected to show relationship to the verb could cover all the basic functions (subject, object, indirect object, etc.), and even take on some adverbial meanings. On the other hand, a noun inflected to show relationship to other nouns could show adjectival meanings, possession, or simply form compound words.

The different forms for these nouns are based on the other part that fascinated me: sounds. I thought it would be neat if consonants with the same place of articulation (like b, p, v, and f, for example) alternated their manners of articulation (that is, b means something different than p) to indicate different meanings or grammatical functions. So that's how it works in Paijodd. Final consonants change to indicate different meanings or relationships.

Fricatives (like v and f), for example, indicate plurals. A voiced consonant (such as b, singular, and v, plural) indicates that the noun is related to the verb, while the remaining two (unvoiced - p and f) consonants indicate that the noun is related to other nouns.

There's one more aspect of sound that fascinated me, though: vowels. I always liked English irregular verbs like run, which changes its vowel in the past tense, to ran, so I wanted something of that in Paijodd. To that end, it is not only final consonants that indicate the noun's relationship to its verb, but the vowels in the final syllable of the word as well. To create rules for this, I arranged the possible vowels in Paijodd into a hierarchy. In noun base forms, the vowel moves down in the hierarchy to indicate relationship to a verb, or stays the same as the base form to indicate relationship to another noun.

To make this all a little bit clearer, let's look at an example. Take the word sabb, which means "war". The two forms would be:

seb- = related to a verb, and
sap- = related to a noun.

seb- shows the vowel e, which is below a in the hierarchy I devised, and the voiced final consonant b. Together these sounds show that this word is related to the verb.

sap- on the other hand, shows the original vowel, a, unchanged from the base form, sabb, and the unvoiced consonant p, which IS changed from the base form, together indicating this word's relationship to other nouns.

To these would be added suffixes making the precise relationship with the other part of speech a little clearer. To round out our example, let's just take the suffix -ía, which has a meaning like with or of. Thus, it can express how someone did something in the verb-related form: Sebía sem eós, "He came with war" (in order to make war or by making war). Further, in the noun-related form, it can show possession: Sapía égg, "the war's end".

I could outline the entire grammar, of course, but this is just a taste of it, and only meant to explain which aspects fascinated me about the prospect of creating a language and why. For me, it was primarily the notion of creating an entirely new and unique way to express the relationships between words in a phrase or sentence, as well as the use of different but related sounds to change the meaning or function of a word. It was these titillating bits of the language-that-could-be that knocked me off of my feet, and kept me locked in my room for hours, afraid that someone might walk in on me any minute!

Why am I a Christian, anyway?

Discussing my thoughts about Dawkins arguments in my last post naturally begs this question. And I would like to share briefly how I became a Christian, and more importantly, what keeps me going, in spite of the obvious challenges that being of a curious, analytical mindset raises.

First, I became a Christian at the age of fourteen, or at least that's when I made it my own, and chose to follow Christ for myself, not just because it was the way I had been raised. I made the decision at a moment of crisis when, confronted with ideas from other religions, I realized I needed to decide what I believed. Although I respected the idea of constant searching for truth from Eastern traditions, I felt that Christianity had the most cohesive argument of any religious system I was familiar with at the time: it explains where we all came from, why things don't seem right in the world, and what the God who created it all has done and is doing about it, and what will become of everything in the end.

Created by a Holy, just God in His image, man sinned and was separated from the creator. Man's sin is so pervasive that he cannot earn forgiveness on His own, because God's holiness and justice cannot be attained by man. Yet God is also loving and merciful, so He sent Christ to die on the cross, thereby satisfying the justice of God, while allowing Him to extend His love and mercy to man. But man must accept it in order to escape the justice of God.

That still makes more sense to me than any other belief system out there. But what really keeps me going in Christ is the growth I've experienced in all the years since, the experience of living the Christian life. Thinking Christianly about world issues, consttantly seeking to grow and learn more, and to deepen my relationship with God through Christ, as well as to take action and actively love people as Christ loves them are all the reasons I still find Christianity to be the most satsifying, freeing, and enjoyable experience of faith.