I have only been blogging for a few months and I am having great fun doing it. I have had some great conversation via the comment section of the blog and have ended up making some cool acquaintances (as much as you can with a cyber connection). It has been an excellent learning experience–I have no idea if anybody is learning from me but I sure am learning from them. And I especially appreciate being able to address very strongly held ideas and opinions in a very respectful way. I hope it will continue.

But this is what I find fascinating–I hear from atheists, agnostics, non-Christian, non-religious, etc. I hear from the people who strongly disagree with me–and that is great–it seems we especially love to talk about theism, evolution and religion. I rarely hear from people who agree with me. I am not even suggesting that I should. I was recently at a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza and Hitchens opening statement was unusually gracious and brought up no points of contention–he didn’t even try to be obnoxious. When Dinesh got up to speak he mentioned that it didn’t make sense for him to stand there and “hammer out their points of agreement.” When we agree why make a point of it.

What is so fascinating is both how we love to disagree and to show how we are right–we love the interchange–we love the combat. And I, for one, think it is wonderful!

Pastor Jeff

‘FOX News Reporting: Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children Are Really Reading?’
November 24, 2009 by Fox News (hat tip to Education Watch International)

FOX News Reporting investigated the $10 billion dollar-a-year textbook industry and how the drive to be politically correct might be taking over American schools.

Host Tucker Carlson, asked experts, teachers, publishers and parents the same question: “Do you know what is inside your children’s textbooks?” From kindergarten through college, we found staggering errors and omissions which may be pushing agendas, hidden and otherwise.

bias, censorship, children, education, ideology, indoctrination, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, propaganda, relativism, scandal

Brandom’s favorite philosopher is Hegel, and in this area the most salient difference between Kant and Hegel is that Hegel does not think philosophy can rise above the social practices of its time and judge their desirability by reference to something that is not itself an alternative social practice. For Hegel as for Brandom, there are no norms which are not the norms of some social practice. So when asked “are these desirable norms?” or “is this a good social practice?” all either can do is ask “by reference to what encompassing social practice are we supposed to judge desirability?” or, more usefully, “by comparison to the norms of what alternative social practice?”…Cultural politics can create a society that will find inter-racial marriages repulsive, and cultural politics of a different sort can create one that finds such marriage unobjectionable.

– Richard Rorty, Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV (2007), p. 23, 13-14

The above quote is, to my mind, an excellent example of what Christians believe is the poverty of relativism.

Taking Rorty’s example, Christians believe that there is a difference between the society that treats inter-racial marriage as repulsive,  and the society that treats it as unobjectionable, and perhaps beautiful. Furthermore, Christians think that such norms, such recommendations, can be argued for in a more forceful way than saying: ‘this is what works for us.’ To be fair, Rorty’s works are filled with intelligent, fascinating and persuasive replies to just this objection.

But when I ask myself which picture I am more drawn to, which picture I hope more and more people are drawn to, and which picture describes a world I would want to live in, Rorty’s picture begins to look actually repulsive.

The issue of morality and cultural difference is a complex and fragile one; it raises questions and anxieties that aren’t easily answered and relieved through deploying a simple theory. But I find Rorty’s answer of giving up on objectivity and universalizability really disheartening.

Hey, Don’t Give Terrorist Murderers a Fat Lip; Navy SEALS Criminally Charged
November 25, 2009 by Debbie Schlussel

A couple of years ago, I was on the thankfully now-defunct “Montel” show to discuss political issues (and get berated by the unduly smug pothead with two diamond stud earrings, who hosted the eponymous show). I was on with the family of one of the Blackwater employees who was burnt to a crisp and hung on display in Fallujah by Iraqi Muslim barbarians (a redundant phrase). The family was suing Blackwater (now known as “Xe”) and placed the blame squarely on Blackwater and not the Islamic terrorists who did this. That was the point I tried to focus on during the show.

Now, U.S. troops are also getting the treatment Blackwater got. They captured one of the savage Islamic terrorists who committed this brutal, barbaric set of murders and desecrations. But they gave the guy a fat lip. And, in the Obama Islamo-pandering worldview, a swollen lip far exceeds murdering four Americans, burning their bodies to a crisp, and hanging them on display for Muslim laughing, smiling, and partying.

abuse, criminal, extremism, ideology, left wing, liberalism, military, news, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, relativism, scandal, terrorism

Liberals think that the title of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is an oxymoron.  They’re wrong.  Goldberg himself writes:

“For more than sixty years, liberals have insisted that the bacillus of fascism lies semi-dormant in the bloodstream of the political right.  And yet with the notable and complicated exceptions of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom, no top-tier American conservative intellectual was a devotee of Nietzsche or a serious admirer of Heidegger.  All major conservative schools of thought trace themselves back to the champions of the Enlightenment–John Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Burke–and none of them have any direct intellectual link to Nazism or Nietzsche, to existentialism, nihilism, or even, for the most part, Pragmatism.  Meanwhile, the ranks of the leftwing intellectuals are infested with ideas and thinkers squarely in the fascist tradition.  And yet all it takes is the abracadabra word “Marxist” to absolve most of them of any affinity with these currents.  The rest get off the hook merely by attacking bourgeois morality and American values–even though such attacks are themselves little better than a reprise of fascist arguments” [page 175].

“Foucault’s “enterprise of Unreason,” Derrida’s tyrannical logocentrism, Hitler’s “revolt against reason.”  All fed into a movement that believes action is more important than ideas.  Deconstructionism, existentialism, postmodernism, Pragmatism, relativism: all these ideas had the same purpose–to erode the iron chains of tradition, dissolve the concrete foundations of truth, and firebomb the bunkers where the defenders of the ancient regime still fought and persevered.  These were ideologies of the “movement.”  The late Richard Rorty admitted as much, conflating Nietzsche and Heidegger with James and Dewey as part of the same grand project” [Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, page 176].

It turns out that most of the moral and philosophical assumptions of liberalism have been shared by not only the Marxists, but the Nazis as well.  NAZI stood for “National Socialist German Workers Party,” and was merely a rival brand of the clearly leftist political ideology of socialism.  And given the fact that Marxism was in fact every bit as totalitarian and murderous as Nazism, in hindsight it seems rather bizarre that “Marxist” was ever an abracadabra word that the American left was willing to bear to begin with.

The purpose of this article is to explore how the foundational ideas that liberals uphold as being the opposite of fascism in fact actually fed the monster of fascist Nazism, and how the modern American left continue to fall prey to fascist premises and outcomes to this very day.

It is particularly interesting that the supposedly highly individualistic and influential school of thought known as “existentialism” became so ensnared by fascism and Nazism.  On the surface, existentialism would seem to be the very polar opposite of fascism and Nazism.  After all, a philosophy of radical freedom centered in the individual would surely be incompatible with a totalitarian social system that denies political liberty in the name of the community.  One would assume that existentialism would be a philosophy of rebellion against all such external authority.  And yet the Nazis quoted Frederich Nietzsche at great length in support of their ideology (see also here).  Martin Heidegger, one of the foremost existentialist thinkers in history, turned out to have been a proud member of the Nazi Party.  And even famed existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre – who fought to resist fascism in his Nazi-occupied France during WWII – ultimately merely chose another totalitarian ideology in its place (Sartre identified himself as a Marxist and a Maoist).

Georg Lukács observed (in The Destruction of Reason, 1954, page 5) that tracing a path to Hitler involved the name of nearly every major German philosopher since Hegel: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dilthy, Simmel, Scheler, Heidegger, Jaspers, Weber.  Rather than merely being amoral monsters, the Nazis emerged out of a distinguished liberal secular humanist intellectual tradition.

Max Weinreich documented in Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes against the Jewish People, an exhaustive study of the complicity of German intellectuals with the Nazi regime.  Far from opposing the Nazi regime, we find that German academia actively provided the intellectual justification for Nazi fascism as well as the conceptual framework for the Holocaust.  Weinreich does not claim that German scholars intended the Holocaust, but he argues that the Holocaust would not have been possible without them.

He asks, “Did they administer the poison?  By no means; they only wrote the prescription.”

How could such a thing happen?

Very easily, it turns out.

The existentialists (along with the secular humanists and the liberals), deny the transcendent, deny objective truth, and deny the objective morality that derive from transcendence and objective truth.  Rather than any preordained system – whether moral or theological – existentialist anchored meaning not to any ideals or abstractions, but in the individual’s personal existence.  Life has no ultimate meaning; meaning is personal; and human beings must therefore create their own meaning for themselves.

One should already begin to see the problem: since existentialism, by its very nature, refuses to give objective answers to moral or ideological questions, a particular existentialist might choose to follow either a democrat or totalitarian ideology – and it frankly doesn’t matter which.  All that matters is that the choice be a genuine choice.

Existentialists didn’t merely acknowledge this abandonment of transcendent morality, they positively reveled in it.  In his book St. Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre celebrated the life of a criminal.  Genet was a robber, a drug dealer, and a sexual deviant.  By all conventional moral standards, Genet was an evil man.  But for Sartre, even ostensibly evil actions could be moral if they were performed in “good faith.”  And since Sartre’s Genet consciously chose to do what he did, and took responsibility for his choices and his actions, he was a saint in existentialist terms.

And the problem becomes even worse: by rejecting the concepts of transcendence, objective meaning, truth, and moral law, and by investing ultimate authority in the human will (i.e. Nietzsche’s “will to power”, Hitler’s “triumph of the will”), existentialism played directly into the hands of fascism — which preached the SAME doctrines.  If fascism can be defined as “violent and practical resistance against the process of transcendence,” as Ernst Nolte defined it, then it’s affinities with existentialism are crystal clear.  The two movements became part of the same stream of thought.

Modern Nietzsche followers argue that Nietzsche was not a racial anti-Semite.  For the sake of argument maybe he wasn’t; but he was without any question an intellectual anti-Semite, who attacked the Jews for their ideas and their ethics — particularly as they contributed to Western civilization and to Christianity (which he also actively despised).  And in addition to Nietzsche’s intellectual anti-Semitism was his utter contempt for any form of abstractions — particularly as they related to the transcendental categories of morality and reason.  Nietzsche maintained that abstraction of life resulted from abstraction of thought.  And he blamed Christianity – which he rightly blamed as a creation of the Jews – for the denial of life manifested in Christian morality.

And, unlike most pseudo-intellectuals of today, Nietzsche was consistent: in his attack against Christianity, he attacked Judeo-Christian morality.  He attacked the Christian value of other-centered love, and argued that notions of compassion and mercy favored the weak and the unfit, thereby breeding more weakness.  Don’t you dare think for a single nanosecond that Hitler didn’t take the arguments of this beloved-by-liberals philosopher and run down the field with them toward the death camps.

The Nazis aligned themselves not only against the Jews but against the the Judeo-Christian God and the Judeo-Christian morality the Jews represented.  A transcendent lawgiving God, who reveals His moral law on real tablets of stone for mankind to follow, was anathema to the fascists.  They argued that such transcendence alienates human beings from nature and from themselves (i.e., from their own genuine choices).  The fascist intellectuals sought to forge a new spirituality of immanence, focused upon nature, on human emotions, and on the community.  The fascists sought to restore the ancient pre-Christian consciousness, the ancient mythic sensibility in the form of the land and the blood, in which individuals experience unity with nature, with each other, and with their own deepest impulses.

Gene Edward Veith in his book Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian worldview writes:

The fascist rebellion against transcendence restored the ancient pagan consciousness.  With it came barbarism, a barbarism armed with modern technology and intellectual sophistication.  The liquidation of the transcendent moral law and “Jewish” conscience allowed the resurgence of the most primitive and destructive emotions, the unleashing of original sin (page 14).

Nietzsche argued that God is dead, and Hitler tried to finish Him off by eradicating the Jews.  What is less known is that he also planned to solve the “church problem” after the war.  Hitler himself  said:

“The war is going to be over.  The last great task of our age will be to solve the church problem.  It is only then that the nation will be wholly secure” [From Hitler's Tabletalk (December 1941), quoted in The Nazi Years: A Documentary History, ed. Joachim Remak, 1990, page 105].

Hitler boasted that “I have six divisions of SS composed of men absolutely indifferent in matters of religion.  It doesn’t prevent them from going to their deaths with serenity in their souls.”  And Himmler said, “Men who can’t divest themselves of manners of previous centuries, and scoff and sling mud at things which are ‘holy’ and matters of belief to others, once and for all do not belong in the SS.”

With the creed “God is dead” and the resulting “death of God,” Nietzsche predicted that energizing conflict and revolution would reemerge in a great wave of nihilism.  Human beings would continue to evolve, he said, nodding to Darwinism.  And man would ultimately give way to Superman.  And Nietzsche said that this Superman would not accept the anachronistic abstract, transcendental meanings imposed by disembodied Judeo-Christian rationalism or by a life-denying religion.  Rather, this Superman would CREATE meaning for himself and for the world as a whole.

The Superman, according to Nietzsche, would be an artist who could shape the human race – no longer bound by putrefying and stultifying and stupefying transcendence – to his will.  “Man is for him an un-form, a material, an ugly stone that needs a sculptor,” he wrote.  Such a statement did not merely anticipate the Darwinist-based Nazi eugenics movement.  It demonstrated how the exaltation of the human will could and would lead not to general liberty, as one might have expected, but to the control of the many by the elite — with those of the weaker in will being subjugated to the will of the Supermen.

Nietzsche’s new ethic became the rationale for all the Nazi atrocities that would follow.  As Nietzsche himself put it, “The weak and the failures shall perish: the first principle of OUR love of man.  And they shall even be given every possible assistance.  What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and the weak: Christianity” (in “The Anti-Christ” in Portable Nietzsche, p. 570).  We see here also the exemplification of yet another legacy left behind by Nietzsche that was picked up by the Nazi and afterward by secular humanist atheists today: the Nietzschean attitude of flippant, sarcastic contempt for all the ordinary human values that had resulted from Judeo-Christianity.

One of the ordinary human values that had resulted from Judeo-Christianity was the fundamental sanctity of human life.  But the Nazis had their own concept – Lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”).  And nearly fifty million of the most innocent and helpless human beings have perished as a result of an existentialist philosophy that survived the fall of the Nazis in liberal thought, which celebrates pro-existentialist “pro-choice” above human life.

Nietzsche’s philosophy underlies the thought of all the later existentialists, and the darker implications of his thought proved impossible to ignore.

And Martin Heidegger, in his own personal choice to commit himself to National Socialism, did not ignore them.

There is more that needs to be understood.

Martin Heidegger invoked Nietzsche in his 1933 Rectoral Address, in his speech entitled, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” in which he articulated his commitment to the integration of academia with National Socialism.  He began by asking, if Nietzsche is correct in saying that God is dead, what are the implications for knowledge?

As Heidegger explained, if God is dead, there is no longer a transcendent authority or reference point for objective truth.  Whereas classical thought, exemplified by the Greeks, could confidently search for objective truth, today, after the death of God, truth becomes intrinsically “hidden and uncertain.”  Today the process of questioning is “no longer a preliminary step that is surmounted on the way to the answer and thus to knowing; rather, questioning itself becomes the highest form of knowing.”

Heidegger’s conclusion became accepted to the point of becoming a commonplace of contemporary liberal thought: that knowledge is a matter of process, not content.  With the death of God, there is no longer any set of absolutes or abstract ideals by which existence must be ordered.  Such “essentialism” is an illusion; and knowledge in the sense of objective, absolute truth must be challenged.  The scholar is not one who knows or searches for some absolute truth, but the one who questions everything that pretends to be true.

Again, one would think that such a skeptical methodology would be highly incompatible with fascism, with its practice of subjecting people to an absolute human authority.  And yet this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of fascism.  In fact, Heidegger’s Rectoral Address was warmly endorsed by the National Socialists for a very good reason: the fascists saw themselves as iconoclasts, interrogating the old order and boldly challenging all transcendent absolutes.

We find that in this same address in which Heidegger asserts that “questioning itself becomes the highest form of knowing,” Heidegger went on to advocate expelling academic freedom from the university:

“To give oneself the law is the highest freedom.  The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the university.”

Heidegger argued that the traditional canons of academic freedom were not genuine but only negative, encouraging “lack of concern” and “arbitrariness.”  Scholars must become unified with each other and devote themselves to service.  In doing so, he stated, “the concept of the freedom of German students is now brought back to it’s truth.”

Now, the claim that freedom would somehow emerge when academic freedom is eliminated might be sophistry of the worst kind, but it is not mere rhetorical doublespeak.  Why?  Because Heidegger was speaking existentially, calling not for blind obedience, but for a genuine commitment of the will.  Freedom was preserved because “to give oneself the law” was a voluntary, freely chosen commitment.  Academic freedom as the disinterested pursuit of truth shows “arbitrariness,” parking of the old essentialist view that truth is objective and transcendent.  The essentialist scholar is detached and disengaged, showing “lack of concern,” missing the sense in which truth is ultimately personal, a matter of the will, demanding personal responsibility and choice.  In the new order, the scholar will be fully engaged in service to the community.  Academic freedom is alienating, a function of the old commitment to moral and intellectual absolutes.

And what this meant in practice could be seen in the Bavarian Minister of Culture’s directive to professors in Munich, that they were no longer to determine whether something “is true, but whether it is in keeping with the direction of the National Socialist revolution” (Hans Schemm, quoted in Hermann Glaser, The Cultural Roots of National Socialism, tr. Ernest A. Menze, 1978, p. 99).

I point all of the above out to now say that it is happening all over again, by intellectuals who unknowingly share most of the same tenets that made the horror possible the last time.

We live in a time and in a country in which the all-too modern left has virtually purged the university of conservatives and conservative thought.  This is simply a fact that is routinely confirmed.  And as a mater of routine, conservative speakers need not apply at universities.  If they are actually invited to speak, they are frequently shouted down by a relative few liberal activists.  And leftwing censorship is commonplace.  Free speech is largely gone, in a process that simply quashes unwanted views.  We have a process today in which a professor who is himself employing fascist tactics calls a student “a fascist bastard.”  And why did he do so?  Because the student gave a speech in a speech class choosing a side on a topic that the professor did not like.

We live in a society in which too many of our judges have despised a system of objective laws from an objective Constitution and have imposed their own will upon both.  Judicial activist judges have largely driven transcendent religion and the transcendent God who gives objective moral laws out of the public sphere.

Today, we live in a society that will not post the Ten Commandments – the epitome of transcendent divinely-ordained moral law – in public schools.  And why not?  Because judges ruled that:

“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments,” which, the Court said, is “not a permissible state objective under the Establishment Clause.”

One can only marvel that such justices so cynically debauched the thought of the founding fathers whose ideas they professed to be upholding.

Justices of the Supreme Court agreed with this fallacious ruling even as the figure of Moses holding the Ten Commandments rules atop the very building in which they betrayed our nation’s founding principles.

And thus the left has stripped the United States of America bare of transcendent moral law, just as their intellectual forebears did prior to WWII in Nazi Germany.   And thus the intellectual left has largely stripped the United States of America from free debate within academia largely by pursuing the same line of reasoning that Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger employed to do the same in Nazi Germany.  We saw this very feature evidenced by leftist scientists who threw aside their scientific ethics in order to purge climatologists who came to a different conclusion.

The climate that led to fascism and to Nazism in Germany did not occur overnight, even though the final plunge may have appeared to be such to an uninformed observer.  It occurred over a period of a half a dozen decades or so, with the transcendent and objective moral foundations having been systematically torn away.  And after that degree of cancer had been reached, it only took the right leader or the right event to plunge the world into madness.

A story is told about a man sitting next to an attractive woman on an airplane and asking if she would be willing to sleep with him for $1000. When she rebuffed his offer with disgust he raised the offer to $10,000. When he raised the ante to $100,000 she reluctantly agreed to the proposition. He then rather sheepishly told her that he really did not have that kind of money so would she follow through on the bargain for $100. In absolute shock she practically screamed in his face, “What kind of woman do you think I am?!” He simply responded, “We’ve already determined that, now we just haggling over the price.”

A second story is told about a speech being given at Harvard University (I believe it may have been by Chuck Colson) and after mentioning ethics numerous times a student allegedly stood and shouted in protest, “Whose ethics?” In the pluralistic society in which we live that is a pretty important question. As a Christian I am going to suggest that ethics are based in the Scriptures which certainly would be understood as an objective and absolute standard. If someone does not accept that as a standard then another measuring stick will move into the vacuum. So, assuming that ethics are important, which I think most would agree that they are, we must have some basis for them.

Some individuals would fall into the Bertrand Russell school of thought that right and wrong are determined by feelings. Others may agree that society sets the standard for what is considered ethical behavior–what might have been considered unethical 10 years ago may or may not be considered so today. At least one of the prevailing methods would be the ever popular “the ends justify the means.” We just saw a recent example in the political world. While it has been common practice for quite some time in Washington, DC, the “buying” of votes in favored legislation seems to be reaching a deafening crescendo. However, we have now come to a place where it is a status symbol to be celebrated.

According to “The Christian Science Monitor” on November 24:  “On Saturday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana was pressed by reporters on whether she had cast a vote with Democratic leadership on healthcare in exchange for $100 million in federal aid to her state. She seized the opportunity to correct the record. ‘It’s not $100 million, it’s $300 million, and I’m proud of it and will keep fighting for it,’ she told reporters after a floor speech announcing her support of a vote to begin debate on healthcare reform.” I think people on both sides of the political aisle would agree that “buying votes” would fall into the category of unethical (and I am certainly not implying that this does not happen in both political parties–it certainly does–but this certainly is one of the most public examples). I also have a feeling that the perceived rightness/wrongness of this behavior may be influenced by how important one considers the end result to be.

So once again–”Whose Ethics?”

Pastor Jeff

Recently, I had posted a debate from the Unbelievable radio show, which is broadcast in the UK. The topic of the debate was whether India should pass an anti-conversion law to prevent Christians from trying to convert people to Christianity. Basically, many Hindus in India want Christians to adopt the Hindu notions of polytheism and religious pluralism. They want Christians to accept that Jesus is one incarnation of the divine among many, and they want to outlaw the Christian practice of using speech to convince people to become Christians.

You can listen to the debate here in my original post.

But I wanted to highlight another debate that occurred in the comments of this blog, between me and a Hindu reader, who challenged me for being intolerant because I said that Hinduism was false.

His initial comment is here.

Guys, all religions teach the same things. Its how each religion is interpreted that makes it different. If you follow any religion persistently, it will lead you to a peaceful and happy life.

[...]If one feels happy following Christian rituals, he may follow Christianity; if he feels happy following Hindu rituals, he is good to a Hindu. It all depends on what makes sense to the person. Enforcing or luring someone to another religion is wrong…It should be a personal choice. And no one should oppose a conversion made by personal choice.

[...]To say that someone’s God or method of worship is false or not real is absolute rubbish according to me.

[...]If one says that other’s God or religion is false, he/she is not tolerating the other’s beliefs. And its immoral. Such things lead to religious conflicts.

[...]I believe in Jesus and so in my religion which is Hinduism.

[...]Why convert when a human being’s main aim is to be happy? Every religion has scriptures that tell how to become happy and attain heaven/liberation.

[...]Everyone loves his/her religion. They would not want to hear anything bad about it.

And I replied:

Our view as Christians is that the purpose of religion is not to live a happy life and to be “good”. Our view is that we want to believe what is true and to know God as God really is. We believe that God is a person, with a real personality – likes and dislikes.

What you’re proposing is a Hindu approach to religion, except with Christian symbols and rituals. But Christians don’t care about symbols and rituals much. We are more interested in history, science and propositional logic. We treat religion like… any other area of knowledge. First we discover the truth, then we act on it.

Additionally, you have a Hindu approach to conversion, and you are trying to force that on Christians. You can keep your Hindu approach to yourself, and tolerate the fact that we have a different approach to conversion.

[...]You’re not in a position to know what Christianity teaches, or what Jesus believes, since you haven’t looked into these things at all. You know Hinduism. And you are projecting Hinduism onto other religions. But Hinduism is totally different than Christianity. They conflict in many areas, like cosmology and history. We believe that the universe had a beginning, you think it’s eternal. And science can arbitrate that claim. We are willing to change our beliefs to be in line with what we can test in the external world, using the laws of logic, and the study of science and history.

[...]You write “To say that someone’s God or method of worship is false or not real is absolute rubbish according to me.”, yet you think that Christianity is false, and not real. But I am actually not offended by that at all. You are welcome to think I am wrong. I don’t mind, this is the way that the game plays. Only one of us can be right, and if you were right, I would have to switch over to your view and that would be fine with me.

[...]You write “Everyone loves his/her religion. They would not want to hear anything bad about it.” No that’s your view. You identify Hindusim with India and patriotism and your people and culture. I don’t identify Christianity with anything except truth. I like it because it’s true. And that the only reason I like it.

[...]When I say that Hinduism is false, I am not “talking bad about your religion” any more than I am talking bad about the view that 2 + 2 = 5, when I say that 2 + 2 = 4. It’s not talking bad about an idea to say it is false.

And then he replied:

Do you believe that people who worship idols are devilish or all religions except Christianity are false? If yes then explain me with proper scientific reasoning and provide me a proof in the recent decades that logically explains the above two statements. You need to prove me that what you believe is experimented by scientists and proven by technology.

[...]I believe in all Gods no matter what religion because God is One. For me and this generation of educated Indians, we believe in tolerance and respect for all religions. We believe in co-operating with each other and not pointing flaws in others beliefs until its proven scientifically and attested by scientific authority. And we believe that people’s belief be respected!

Then I replied:

The current best theory of the origin of the universe is called the big bang theory. It states that all the matter, energy, as well as time and space and time, came into being from nothing. It is backed by experimental data from red-shift measurements, cosmic microwave background radiation measurements, and light element abundance measurements, etc. The theory states that the universe began 14.7 billion years ago. Additionally, the universe will not recollapse because measurements of mass density from Maxima and Boomerang show that the universe will expand forever.

The big 3 monotheistic religions agree with the universe coming into being from nothing. Unfortunately, other religions think that the universe is eternal, such as Mormonism and Hinduism. On that basis, I reject Hinduism, which requires that the universe be eternal.

“I believe in all Gods no matter what religion because God is One.” That view (pantheism/polytheism) is called Hinduism. You are a Hindu. Christianity (monotheism) is mutually exclusive with Hinduism, because the teachings are in conflict, (as with the example of cosmology). As a Hindu, you therefore think that Christianity is false. On your definition, you don’t “tolerate” Christianity – you think it’s false. You don’t “respect” Christianity, because you want to force your view (Hinduism) and your view of conversion (don’t tell other people their religion is false) on Christians.

[...]Note: I am ok with you saying that I am wrong and that Christianity is false.

And then we sort of wound things down from there.

Anyway, the point of this exchange is most people in most religions think that the point of religion is to be happy, to have a sense of community and to get along with everyone by never talking about whether religious claims about the external world are true or false. But that view of the purpose of religion is not the Christian view. On the Christian view, the goal is to seek the truth. And part of Christian practice is to defend Christianity in public, and trying to convince other people that Christianity is true.

So, I think that Christians need to be a bit tougher, and recognize when someone who is not a Christian is trying to get them to accept that the purpose of religion is not to seek the truth. That’s their view. That’s not our view. It doesn’t make any sense for someone to say that I am evil for thinking they are wrong, when they are thinking that I am wrong. I think a better way forward is to allow other people to disagree with you, but to keep the disagreement focused on arguments and evidence.

And just because you disagree with someone else, it doesn’t mean you have to be mean to them. In my office, I am friends with Hindus, Muslims, atheists and Jews. We try to outdo one another in good deeds to make our religions look good! And when we debate which religion is true, we use arguments and evidence to attack and defend. What I’ve found is that you get a much stronger friendship when you are comfortable being yourself. I keep telling my co-workers – it’s OK to disagree.

Related posts

• the problem of religious pluralism and religious truth claims
• the problem of postmodern skepticism
• the fate of the unevangelized (what about those who never heard of Jesus)
• the hiddenness of God (why isn’t there more evidence for God’s existence?)
• are all religions basically the same?
• what about the blind men and the elephant?
• isn’t faith is opposed to reason and evidence? (a debate between a Christian and a postmodern relativist)
• what makes Christianity different from other religions?

Mentoring

• the importance of being able to argue both sides of a question
• why does talking about religion make people uncomfortable?
• how to talk to your co-workers about your faith

Apologetics advocacy

• does the Bible teach that faith is opposed to logic and evidence?
• the six enemies of apologetic engagement
• why men flee the feminized church
• why won’t Christians defend their faith in public?

This question was asked of a group of college students and their parents.  Does this give you pause for thought?What is ethics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIaHxC7BT0A

Whatever in any city is regarded as just and admirable is just and admirable in that city for as long as it is thought to be so.

Man is the measure of all things.

PROTAGORAS, 480-411 BC
Attributed in Plato’s Theatetus, 196C, Quoted in E Hussey, the Pre-Socratics, p.109

So when the Nazis considered it just and admirable to kill the Jews, it was just and admirable – for their whole reign anyway. The very moment the Americans arrived it became unjust and unadmirable. Which makes it implausible to say the least.

Some of you will remember the old anti-freeze commercial which ended with that rather rhetorical question–”if you can’t trust Prestone, who can you trust?” Trust is a rather interesting concept. We know that trust can be given, but if broken must be earned back–in a difficult and time consuming way. We are called on to trust all the time–when we sit in a chair, when we get on a plane, when we eat at a restaurant, etc. Most of us have probably had a teenage child in a somewhat whining/pitiful/begging/incredulous tone  say to us, “don’t you trust me?!” Often, the most honest response to that question is no. Then there are the people we feel we should trust. We sense that we ought to be able to trust the authorities in our lives–things like the government (that is becoming more and more difficult) and our professors (which is becoming more and more unwise).

This is especially true when it comes to early American history.When those of us that have been educated in the public school system of the United States for the last 40-50 years, actually have the opportunity to read some of the primary documents of the Founders and hear some of the things they actually said will usually respond in a rather disgusted tone, “I have been lied to!” Of course, this is a proper response because it is true–we have been lied to. I have addressed this before but I am continually amazed at seemingly educated people who attempt to build the case for the absurd claim that our Founders were mainly deists or secularists. Don’t misunderstand me–I realize they only say this because they also have been lied to.

And we have been lied to in so many areas in our early history–that our law, our education, our Constitution were not based on the foundation of the Bible, religion and morality. A really great one is that the “wall of separation of church and state” is actually in the Constitution–that is maybe the best example of “if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough people will begin to believe it.” The truth is that what we read in history books, what we see on documentaries, and what history professors tell us about the founding era would be completely unrecognizable to our founders. And the reason we have become so gullible is because we are ignorant of the truth–we buy into the thinking that says if I read it in a book then it must be true. Unfortunately, we cannot trust our education to the educators–we must begin to educate ourselves–with the truth!

Pastor Jeff

I have mentioned before in an earlier post, Three Universes, there are essentially three levels of reality in our world.  God, who is not confined within his own creation, exists outside of the physical universe.  This makes him his own universe.  Within his domain, there exists our physical universe, which can be affected from without.  It is a lesser reality, being less absolute, not existing forever, and depending upon God for its existence.

Within the physical universe is another, lesser reality, called the mind.  That’s where we actually live.  The mind is even less absolute than the physical world, capable of spontaneous change, inconsistency and a certain degree of incongruity.  Yet, when we experience the physical universe, we do so indirectly, through reconstruction within our brains.  If any of the processes between the actual sensation and the final experience goes awry, then we do not experience the physical universe accurately.  Nerve damage or brain damage disrupt the transfer of information, and what we see no longer resembles reality.  We do not really have a complete grasp on the physical world.  What we really hold, completely, is the image in our minds.  What we experience is all that the universe of the mind contains.  Nothing can exist within the mind except that we are aware of it.  Similarly, nothing can exist within the physical world, except that God is aware of it.  Hence, God is omniscient.

The physical world is not a piece of God.  Nor is the mind a piece of the physical world.  The physical world is corrupt, but that doesn’t make God corrupt.  Similarly, anything can happen in the mind, but it does not escape the mind and infiltrate the physical world.  In fact, nothing in the physical world explains the mind.  Cognitive processes might be explained in physical terms, but not the mind, itself.  A computer thinks, but it does not have a mind.  The mind is as much its own universe as the one we live in, but in a lower fashion.

Now, I’ve said all of this before, but there’s something more to consider.  Before the industrial revolution, humans were grossly subject to the whims of nature.  We had not developed technologically enough to conquer our world.  In that era, through most of our history, we looked to God for the answers to our problems.  That meant that we looked outside of our minds, through and beyond the physical world to God for truth.  With increasing understanding, we became confident in our own power and began to look no further than the physical world for answers.  This was the advent of modernism.  This was also the birth of naturalism, the belief that all things could be explained through the physical universe alone, with no need of God.  We had conquered the world, and we became our own gods.  Technology was the answer for everything that ailed us.

When we sought understanding from God, we attempted to live our lives and order our world in his likeness.  That is, we strove to be godly.  It is no different than the mind attempting to resemble the physical world.  If the lesser world fails to resemble the greater one, then it becomes detached, and its survival becomes imperiled in the one that gets rejected.  If a man goes insane, he no longer sees the world as it is.  Functionally, he imperils himself in the physical world, because he is not firmly grounded in it.  The same is true for our relationship with God.  If we reject God and the supernatural, then we become imperiled in the supernatural.  That is to say that we risk death, spiritually.  For those who still don’t get it, that means Hell.

Modernism was madness.  We might think that what followed, the rejection of modernism, would be the cure to this problem, but it wasn’t.  Rejection of a lie is not necessarily the embracing of truth.  Postmodernism was a flight in the opposite direction from God.  Today’s movement is to seek truth no further than the mind.  Postmodernists don’t even look to the physical world for answers.  For them, there is no absolute truth, because the world that they draw truth from is a world lacking in absolutes.  The mind is not subject to such things.  You have your own truth, and I have mine.  The idea of God is not even on the table.  They’re two steps removed from the truth of God.  They worship whatever their mind creates.

Pre-modernists prayed for rain.  Modernists attempted to make rain.  Postmodernists criticized the modernists for causing climate change.  Where the modernists attempted to improve life through their own hands, postmodernists attempt to improve life by undoing everything that the modernists did.

Pre-modernists believed in the immortal human soul, absolutes and God.  Modernists believed that nothing would last forever, and there was no God, but at least there were absolutes.  Postmodernists believe in no God, no absolutes and nothing eternal, but they play with fantasies in their own heads.

Pre-modernists used the physical world to understand God beyond it.  They worshiped him physically, and they prayed aloud.  Modernists used their minds to understand the physical world.  Postmodernists are primarily concerned with finding themselves.

Now, this postmodern revolution is a religious one, also.  Modernists sought out the “God particle,” reducing God to physical circumstances.  However, postmodernists are a little peculiar, in that they can be just about anything that they want to be at any time.  One could easily attend church one hour and a Buddhist temple the next.  Some of them do exactly that.  Their belief system is not absolute, because the universe of the mind is not absolute.  In Christianity, we know them as the Emergent Church.  In reality, they have even less of a grasp on God than a materialist, who at least recognizes the value of the world that God created.  Had they at least grasped the physical world, they would have held to some concept of an absolute.  In truth, the Emergent church is less of a  Christian than a Darwinist.  They are even further from God.

Now, consider what I said before about sanity.  When a man’s mind ceases to relate intelligibly to the world around him, he is considered insane.  When we, with our lives, ceased to relate meaningfully to the God beyond this world, we took the first step toward our own insane demise.  Postmodernism was the second step, detaching us even from the physical world.  Society is gradually slipping into a state of insanity.  Perhaps this is irreversible.  Perhaps this is the end.  The real travesty is that the Church, which was meant to be the salt and the light of the world, has developed its own form of postmodernism, the Emergent movement.  The real blasted shame is that our own fellow “Christians” have betrayed us and the world to this madness.  They were supposed to be there with us to help stem the tide of this sickness, but they have stabbed us in the back.  The Emergent Church has chosen the same fate as the world.

Therefore, they are also condemned to a world separated from God, a place where he never goes.

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of the liturgical year.  Christians celebrate Jesus as King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  It’s worth reflecting on what those titles mean.  In the ancient world, Persian rulers referred to themselves as Kings of Kings to suggest not only their dominance over other rulers but also a connection to divinity.  The book of Revelation calls Jesus King of Kings, Lord of Lords (17:14 and 19:16) and, in the Great Commission at the end of the book of Matthew (28:18), Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Some years ago my department hired a world-famous scholar, a brilliant man who often found it difficult to relate to students but who worked extraordinarily well with other members of the faculty.  He was a Professor of Professors; teaching other professors was his most important contribution.  (He has since learned to relate to students much more effectively.  But he still excels at mentoring other professors.)  Some pastors take on the role of pastoring other pastors.  They are Pastors of Pastors.  Internal affairs departments are Police of Police.  When we say that Christ is King of Kings, then, we say that he is a leader of leaders, a ruler of rulers.

That does more than say the Christ reigns supreme over everyone, king and commoner alike.  Christ sets a standard even for the leaders of this world.  That there is a standard for this world that comes not from within it, but from outside it, is one of the central themes of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Man is NOT the measure of all things.  The truth is not relative to a king—to a society, a culture, an interpretive community, or an individual will—but reigns supreme over all of them.  Societies, cultures, communities, and individuals have standards, but Jesus is the standard of standards, the truth of truths.  “What is truth?” Pilate asked.  I am the truth, Jesus would surely have answered, if Pilate had stayed to hear it.  Christ provides a foundation for judging the things and the kings of this world.  He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  The powers of the earth are not the ultimate powers.  They have to answer to someone outside themselves.  Their “truths” are not the truth.  There is an absolute truth, however, and that truth is Christ.

Thinking of Jesus as King naturally leads us to ask about his Kingdom.  What is the kingdom of God?  What is required of its citizens?  These are excellent questions.  The gospels portray Jesus as speaking of the kingdom of God again and again.  But he answers these questions only with parables.  (See, for example, Mark 4.) The kingdom of God is like a seed sown on the ground, like a mustard seed, like a treasure in a field. It’s something of great value and power.  He gives us glimpses of the kingdom, and of what is required to enter it.  But we receive only glimpses.  It’s no wonder that theologians have constructed very different views of the kingdom and of what Jesus expects of us.  The glimpses are indirect, fleeting, ambiguous.

But not everything is ambiguous.  Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.  He is the measure of all things.  He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  That’s not ambiguous. It’s not fleeting.  It’s not indirect.

It’s the truth.

Following my videos on Give me the Truth Part 1 and Part 2 and my post on ‘Did God actually say that?‘ I realise that the things mentioned in these posts happen predominantly in charismatic circles where I came from. Now let me say from the very start that not everything in charismatic churches is bad as there is bad in every church and I would agree with John Macarthur when he says:

I’m very much aware of the fact that not everyone who is associated with the Charismatic movement is engaged in the kind of extreme error that we will be, from time to time, referring to.  There are people who are more moderate.  There are people within the Charismatic movement who, themselves, are very, very concerned about the heresies and the aberrations that exist within that movement

However, there are so many things in there which is error that we cannot ignore it.

Here are some classic examples

Now there may be somethings below that you may not agree with but on the whole, I think that John Macarthur hits it right on the head. You can listen to each sermon by clicking on the appropriate link or download it by right clicking on the link and saving the files. 

Does God Still Give Revelation?

Does God Still Give Prophecies?

Proper Biblical Interpretation

Does God Do Miracles Today?

The Third Wave

How Do Spiritual Gifts Operate?

What Was Happening in the Early Church?

Does God Still Heal?

Speaking in Tongues

What Is True Spirituality?

Does God Promise Health and Wealth? Part 1

Does God Promise Health and Wealth? Part 2

Does Experience Determine Truth?

Check out this short paper on truth and postmodernism by Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis.

Excerpt:

The correspondence view of truth, held by the vast majority of philosophers and theologians throughout history, holds that any declarative statement is true if and only if it corresponds to or agrees with factual reality, with the way things are. The statement, “The desk in my study is brown,” is true only if there is, in fact, a brown desk in my study. If indeed there is a brown desk in my study, then the statement, “there is no brown desk in my study,” is false because it fails to correspond to any objective state of affairs.

The titanic statement, “Jesus is Lord of the universe,” is either true or false. It is not both true and false; it is not neither true nor false. This statement either honors reality or it does not; it mirrors the facts or it does not. The Christian claims that this statement is true apart from anyone’s opinion (see Romans 3:4). In other words, it has a mind-independent reality. Minds may recognize this truth, but minds do not create this truth. This is because truth is a quality of some statements and not of others. It is not a matter of subjective feeling, majority vote or cultural fashion. The statement, “The world is spherical,” was true even when the vast majority of earthlings took their habitat to be flat.

The correspondence view of truth entails that declarative statements are subject to various kinds of verification and falsification. This concerns the area of epistemology, or the study of how we acquire and defend knowledge claims. [2] A statement can be proven false if it can be shown to disagree with objective reality. The photographs from outer space depicting the earth as a blue orb (along with prior evidence) falsified flat-earth claims. Certainly, not all falsification is as straightforward as this; but if statements are true or false by virtue of their relationship to what they attempt to describe, this makes possible the marshaling of evidence for their veracity or falsity. [3]

Therefore, Christians — who historically have affirmed the correspondence view of truth — hold that there are good historical reasons to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in space-time history, thus vindicating His divine authority (see Romans 1:4; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11). [4] The Apostle Paul adamantly affirms this view: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15). Without the correspondence view of truth, these resounding affirmations ring hollow. Christianity cannot live and thrive without it.

This is a great article from a very smart guy who has written extensively about truth and postmodernism. Doug also has a blog, in case you want to pay him a visit.

Newsmill är roligt idag. Wetterstrand ligger högst upp på Newsmill och tycker att socialliberaler borde känna sig hemma i Miljöpartiet. Jahaja. Jag är socialliberal och bryr mig miljön. Kanske det?

Men: Socialliberaler beware. En snabb scrollning ner hittar man nämligen ett inlägg från en annan miljöpartist, riksdagsledamoten Esabelle Dingizian. Hon skriver att sexköp borde ge samma straff som människohandel. Låt mig säga detta en gång till eftersom det är ett sådant förbluffande förslag. Sexköp från en frivillig säljare skall jämställas med trafficking. 

Dingizian säger alltså att det borde vara samma straff på att köpa sex från en frivillig man som om jag åker till ett annat land och där bryter ned en annan människa med tvång eller lögner, packar in offret i en lastbil, tar ifrån offret hans pass och hans möjligheter att fly, låser in honom i en barack, ger honom rutten mat två gånger per dag, förslavar honom och tvingar honom att sälja sex under en längre tid.

Det är banne mig det mest rubbade lagförslag jag hört från en riksdagsledamot under den här mandatperioden.

The post-modern world is rather fond of saying that there are no absolutes. A logical counter to this is to ask the relativist whether his statement about absolutes is absolute. He is in the difficult position of refuting his own claim whenever he states it. In rational debates this breaks the law of non-contradiction.

For several years, since reading Christian apologists like CS Lewis and Ravi Zacharias, I have been convinced that there is only one internally consistent worldview, and that is the biblical worldview. All other explanations of reason and existence cut the ground out from under themselves. Either the beliefs themselves are self-refuting, like the man who tried to disprove the existence of air; he was using air as he tried to deny it; or they reduce to absurdities; or they never really deal with the fundamental questions, but rely on borrowed but unadmitted presuppositions from other worldviews. In the final case, we consider their beliefs to be arbitrary, rather than rational.

My explanation could not have been termed with such clarity without first reading Dr. Jason Lisle’s new book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. Creationists have plenty of evidence for the biblical history of the world. They have evidence contradicting the evolutionary and uniformitarian theories of origins. Bible-believing scientists are even doing real science all the time (science of observation and technological advancement to improve our lives), just as they have done for thousands of years. None of these things convinces a man committed to a naturalist worldview. But no naturalist can debate against the Bible, for evolution, or conduct science of his own without assuming things that can only be true if the things the Bible teaches are true. This is the ultimate proof, to engage skeptics on their worldview.

This method has several advantages. First, it keeps in mind that the motive for Christian apologetics is to glorify God and to invite non-Christians to be saved. Thoughtful meekness is what the Bible directs us to have when responding to critics. The Bible also teaches that if we do not live consistently with our beliefs, our critics have reason to ridicule us and those beliefs. Consistency is a biblical tactic.

Second, the Bible does give instructions for debate. Dr. Jason Lisle has applied two verses in Proverbs to his debating style. Do not let a skeptic convince you to fight on neutral ground when the question you are debating is inherently about the reliability of your ground as opposed to all others. For a Christian to abandon, for the sake of argument, his belief in God and dependence on the account of the Bible, is to surrender before he has even lifted his sword. But we can do an internal critique of the skeptic’s position, making apparent where he contradicts himself or leaves questions unanswered.

Third, and I really appreciate this one, a Christian apologist using these techniques does not need to be a PhD or have memorized an encyclopedia of scientific evidence for Creation. Creation science is valid and interesting, but not every believer is called to that kind of knowledge of the world as he is called to give a reason for the hope that is in him and to preach the gospel to every creature. In my experience, it is great for a philosophical person like me to team up with someone who knows a lot of facts, and to tag-team a discussion. Or I could practice a bit more so that I can have some representative cases of creationism scientifically supported.

The Ultimate Proof of Creation is an interesting book on logic and worldviews, exciting as I think of applying it. Think of watching the Discovery Channel and being able to identify the worldview being used, the presuppositions made, and the logical fallacies committed. This book enables you to do that. Or it can help when you’re trying to stay focused when witnessing to a friend who doubts the Bible. Learn to find ways to tie all questions into a question of faith: do you accept the ultimate standard of God, who created you – or do you reject Him and therefore all that depends on Him (including your will and rationality)?

To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn

I don’t believe it!
There she goes again!
She’s tidied up and I can’t find anything!
all my tubes and wires
And careful notes
And antiquated notions
but – it’s poetry in motion
And when she turned her eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm – she blinded me with science
“She blinded me with science!”
She blinded me with …

Thomas Dolby, She Blinded Me With Science

Once upon a time, I had the mind of a scientist. As a kid, I loved geology and astronomy… hell, I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up. (Eventually, I learned that what I really wanted to be was a cosmologist, but that was only after I had switched gears and become an english major). Even once I decided that my career wouldn’t be in the sciences I continued to study certain disciplines for the sheer joy of understanding. So I kept up with the latest ideas on the nature of the universe, I followed the various space probes as they headed out into the void, I discovered and absorbed everything I could find on quantum theory and, later, string theory. I simply found it all fascinating. And in the back of my mind, for many years, I had a slowly developing alternative to the Big Bang. It never quite became conscious and clear, but I was aware that I was trying to piece something together.

Once I changed gears and got interested in Ishmael-inspired themes, I dove full bore into evolutionary theory. I had always accepted its basic premise and pretty much assumed it was (mostly) correct, but I never took a biology course in school, so I had never delved too deeply. Now I did. As a result, I spent a lot of time in the ish forums educating various participants in exactly how evolution works and how we can understand, better, the complex processes involved. It was really good for me, as it gave me a specific focus of interest and expertise and, frankly, there is no better way to learn something than to teach it. And learn it I did.

Eventually, around the same time that I left Chicago, I began to move away from the sciences. Not because I think that they are wrong, but simply because I started to question one of the most basic principles that ALL science is based on: reductionism. How can I possibly understand the nature of a devil’s food cake by tasting a bit of raw flour? Yes, that is silly, but it is also a valid question.

A lot of these questions arose out my study of chaos theory. Well… that, and a few experiences with mushrooms of the psychedelic variety. No, not the way you think. You see, when I trip, and I close my eyes, I see fractals. Growing, evolving, changing behind my closed eyelids. And I remember a time, years back, when my ex had a computer program that generated fractals on the computer screen. I remember watching them and being fascinated – all years before I understood what a fractal really represented.

Let’s look at that… a fractal is a certain type of mathematical equation which you can only solve by running it through each iteration. In other words, you can project the final outcome in any way. You have to solve it repeatedly until it ends. Weather is a complex system – thus the cliché failures of weathermen the world round… the further in the future they try to predict the greater chance that they are completely wrong. Climate, on the other hand, is a merely complicated system, so expecting warm summers and cold winters (relatively) is almost always a safe bet.

But then there are those fractals that my mind generated inside my eyelids. And the patterns I watched, externally on the computer screen. I could never give you the mathematical solution for any of those equations, but the graphical patterns? Yes, I “knew” where it was going to go next at any moment. Simple pattern recognition, and intuition.

So this got me thinking about natural systems and the reductionism of science. Reductionism tries to separate the pieces of a system, to understand each piece before even looking at the relationships. But reality is in the relationships. It’s not the flour, the cocoa, the sugar… it is the way the components combine and alter one another that creates the devil’s food. As a decently accomplished cook, I can play with the relationships, adding other components or changing the quantities of each and generally I will still come up with a rather fine cake (always measure when baking bah!). Not because I understand the nature of a chocolate chip, but because I feel the potential relationship.

So why am I talking about baking a cake? I don’t even eat cake anymore. But it is a simple example that most of us can relate too – even those that have never baked intuitively recognize that adding chocolate chips to devil’s food would be yummy. (Obviously, its been done before ) That makes for a good, simple example that most people can relate to. But now, how about something a little more complex (pardon the pun).

Over the last few days, vera and I have been discussing the difference between agriculture and horticulture. Yesterday, she asked me about Polyface Farms and Joel Salatin. Joel and his farm were featured in Michale Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Joel is doing some really fabulous things. And more importantly, he is allowing himself to learn from his land, experiment with alternatives, explore possibilities. But he is still farming — he is still doing agriculture. I suspect if he continues on the path he is on, one day that will no longer be true. But how would you determine that?

In the other discussion, we were talking about diminishing marginal returns as the benchmark to separate ag from horticulture. From a scientific point of view (and therefore a civilized point of view) that is a relatively simple and straightforward way to identify the difference: it focus on numbers in and out. It focuses on bottom line. It is reductionistic. Useful when speaking to people that hold a civilized worldview.

Within that same worldview, you could break down all of the things he is doing in any given season, and come to the same conclusion based on the tools and techniques he is using. That would be the “proof” that the mathematical formulation works. Whichever side of the line he falls on in a given season.

But despite the fact that I introduced these terms and techniques into the discussion, when vera asked me if Joel was a horticulturalist, I did not do any of these things when forming my answer. I simply thought about what I know of Joel’s operation and I knew he was doing agriculture and fundamentally unsustainable. Systemic, complex, intuition. Likewise, if I turn my thoughts to traditional slash and burn “agriculture”, I know that it is truly horticulture and sustainable**.

So what is the point in all this? I guess at it’s core, I am suggesting that sustainability, at its core, is a function of developing relationships with your community; human and non-human. And in opposition to all of those people that tell us that we will be giving up science and technology and therefore, knowledge, I would like to suggest that we are giving up nothing more than the hubris that we know anything at all.

** Some years back I read an article on traditional slash and burn techniques in the Amazon. In opposition to the assumption that slash and burn is destructive, the article described the entire system once (and in some cases still) used: A plot of jungle would be slashed and burned, clearing land and simultaneously feeding the very poor jungle soil. After the rains, primary and secondary food crops would be planted. These would be followed by perennial food and fiber plants interplanted with annuals and tree seedlings (often fruit or nut trees). Over the course of several seasons, the perennials and trees would take over the entire plot. The fruit and nuts would continue to be harvested for as much as twenty years until larger, non-foodbearing trees took over the area. This same process would be used on multiple plots, each at a different stage of succession. I’m sure I am leaving out key points as I read this probably four or five years ago, but I cannot find a good online discussion of these techniques in the short amount of time I was willing to search.

Start the week off right, with some more links!

Carl Raschke untangles post-modernity, relativism, and hermeneutics.

Ben Witherington laments what has been lost in the format change to Mp3s.

Are evangelicals forming a circular firing squad?

Does the church allow for change?

Are filmmakers eventually going to try to find a way to market every film to Christian audiences?