Songs of Travel

Some Reflections on the Egyptian Revolution

2011-02-17T13:20:00.006-05:00

I have spent much of the past several weeks glued to the news about the situation in Egypt (and am still following the continuing protests throughout the Middle East and North Africa). It has been astonishing how quickly the revolution succeeded in its main goal of ousting Mubarak, and it is a testament to the power of popular protest, especially in an age of social media and global awareness. What has struck me just as much as the success of the protester's main goals, however, is the nature of the protest. Despite the claims of some conservative American opponents of the revolution that this will be bad for Egypt's Christians, the protests seem to have done more to foster unity between Christians and Muslims in Egypt than any event in the past few decades. The BBC has an insightful article about this here. Earlier in the protests someone in Tahrir Square reported that members of the Muslim Brotherhood had begun chanting "Allah Akbar" (God is great), a common enough cry among Muslim protesters (and one heard often in Iranian student protests last year), but were drowned out by other protesters shouting "Muslim, Christian, we're all Egyptian!" Already one of the most iconic images of the protest shows Christians protecting Muslim protesters from attack while they pray:

In addition to promoting religious solidarity, the people involved in the protest have done some remarkable organizational work in a country plagued by inefficiency and corruption. Another BBC story features an interactive map of Tahrir Square during the protests. Clicking on "street clinic" reveals an ad hoc medical clinic set up to help injured protesters, and the caption reads: "Since Egyptians do not typically have access to free medical care, some say the clinics in the square are an improvement on what they are used to." Clicking on "Rubbish bins" reveals a recycling system set up by some of the demonstrators. While this may not seem like much to those of us accustomed to well-organized recycling systems, it struck me as astonishing given the state of Cairo's trash system when I lived there. Cairo is a very dirty city: there are basically no trash bins, and people tend to just throw their trash on the ground. That the demonstrators would set up a *recycling* system illustrates, I think, how different these protesters are from the previously ruling regime: they are much younger, much more globally aware, and much more conscious of ecological and social concerns.

It's not all over yet, of course. Presently the army is in control and many in the army have benefited from the old system and will be reluctant to cast it aside. But most Egyptians know full well that there is a risk of their hard work being undone, and they will continue protesting if the army tries to stand in the way of genuine democratic reforms.

Of course, some worry that those reforms are themselves the real danger, because they risk bringing to power people we do not like--i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood. While it is obvious to anyone not wearing ideological blinders that the MB did not start and was not the main driving force behind this revolution, they are at present the most organized opposition movement in Egypt and it is probable that they will have a significant role to play in any genuinely democratic government. There are several things to note here, though.

First, the MB are not Al-Qaeda. Most Americans know little or nothing about the MB, but find the name scary and so assume that they must be violent extremists. In fact, though many of the MB's goals are certainly not what we might like, they have repeatedly denounced violence in the service of them, and have made public commitments to democracy and the protection of religious minorities. Of course, it could be that these commitments are mere political posturing--but then, one can say that about all political parties' statements. I certainly don't relish the prospect of an Egyptian government led by the MB, but it's not the doomsday scenario some are portraying it is.

Second, as noted above, the protests themselves are nationalist, not religious, in nature, and most of those involved in them do not want to live in a theocracy. If the MB were to move the country in that direction, they would face a great deal of opposition.

Third, I think it can be predicted with virtual certainty that if the MB were to govern in an extremely conservative fashion, they would lose much of even the support they presently have. People support Islamist parties for many reasons, and not all of them involve agreeing with their overtly theocratic aims: for instance, Islamist parties tend to provide good social services, and they are seemingly credible alternative to corrupt regimes. Supporting autocratic regimes is about the safest way for the West to increase support for such movements in the Middle East and Muslim world. If we really want these groups to lose their popularity, we should give them a chance to govern. Then moderates will withdraw their support, and regular citizens generally will see that their policies simply don't work--and once in power, Islamist parties can no longer blame all their problems on the corruption of the ruling autocrats and on Israel and the West (or, at least, more people will see through such scapegoating).

So, I think that most of the possible outcomes of a genuine democratic transition are, in the end, positive:

(1) We get a government dominated by a secular party or parties.

(2) We get a government dominated by the MB, but the MB governs in a comparatively secular and moderate fashion.

(3) We get a government dominated by the MB, and the MB governs in a conservative and theocratic manner. As a result, they lose much of their support and are booted out of power.

The worst outcome, I think, is as follows:

(4) We get a government dominated by the MB, and the MB governs in a conservative and theocratic manner. They also undo the democratic reforms that brought them to power and make it impossible for the people to kick them out through legal means.

But even in this worst-case scenario (which I find unlikely, given the nature of the revolution), it's only a matter of time before we have another revolution, and when that happens, the Islamists will have practically no support. Even in Iran, touted as the analogue that is supposed to show that (4) is what will happen, I am confident that this will happen--Islamic fundamentalism is not popular among the ordinary citizens of that country today.

Given these outcomes, I can think of no credible reason for us to not support democratic reform wholeheartedly. Propping up more autocratic regimes would only foment more anti-American and pro-Islamist sentiments. The same goes for other Middle Eastern/North African countries. If we really want to defeat Islamic extremism, we should be supporting democracy all across the Muslim world.

Not all the news of the revolution has been positive, unfortunately. While the protests were primarily anti-Mubarak and not anti-Western, there was paranoia by some in the crowd of foreign influences, and there were several reports of attacks on foreign journalists (the most infamous was the attack on CNN's Anderson Cooper, but that was by pro-Mubarak thugs, not anti-government protesters). The night after Mubarak stepped down, Lara Logan of CBS was attacked and sexually assaulted. (Some have suggested that she was also attacked by pro-Mubarak forces, but that's not obvious to me.) Unfortunately, sexual harassment and assault, like inter-religious conflict, has been and continues to be a serious problem in Egypt. There are other aspects of Egyptian culture that are also seriously troubling: anti-Semitism and racism against black Africans, for example. (There's no point in pretending these aren't worse than in Western countries or drawing false equivalencies: these are serious problems in Egyptian culture that need to be dealt with.)

But I'm confident that all of these problems will have a better chance of being solved in an open democratic environment than the repressive autocratic one that has existed until now. In a free media, hopefully these issues will be discussed more openly and people who engage in such acts as religious intolerance and sexual harassment will be more openly condemned. This revolution demonstrated what the Egyptian people--Muslim and Christian, male and female, black and white (I haven't read as much about this aspect of the revolution, but saw several blacks--probably mostly Sudanese refugees--in pictures of the protests)--are capable of when they come together as one rather than defining themselves in opposition to each other. I'm hopeful that Egyptians will learn that lesson and overcome not only their political but also their cultural problems.

Thoughts on evidentialism and faith

2010-06-05T19:18:00.000-04:00

Many Christians talk about the need for a “leap of faith” when it comes to religious matters: no, we can’t prove that God exists, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or what have you, but we can make a leap of faith when it comes to these things. Let’s call this “anti-evidentialism”—where evidentialism is the claim that we ought to only believe in proportion to the evidence (what exactly this means is clearly up for some dispute, but I think we have enough of an idea to work with). Anti-evidentialism doesn’t necessarily mean (as it apparently did for Kierkegaard, although I have not read Kierkegaard, and so this is only my second-hand impression) that our faith ought to run contrary to the evidence—that if we have very good reason to think that (e.g.) God does not exist, we ought to believe that he does nevertheless. It might be much more modest than that; it might just mean that reason can’t get us all the way to the certainty we have in faith, and that we need to take a leap of faith to get there. (William James thought that we could let our passions decide in matters like religion when the evidence was not conclusive either way. C. S. Lewis too, from what I understand, thought that there were many good reasons to be both a theist and a Christian, but that reason wouldn’t get you the whole way—eventually you needed to choose to make that leap of faith.)

I find this a somewhat tricky issue. I am quite sympathetic to evidentialism as a philosophical thesis, but the idea that there must be more than just reason to religious faith seems clearly right in some way. What I want to do here is suggest a way that I think it is right, but without undermining evidentialism.

What might motivate anti-evidentialism when it comes to religion? I think one motivator is that reason cannot make us certain that (e.g.) God exists; no matter how good an argument we have, there will always be some room for doubt. I think this is true—ontological arguments aside, we’ll never get an argument that can show the probability of God’s existence to be 1. But how is this any different than any other non-logical or non-mathematical proposition? We can have practical certainty of plenty of things in life without being bothered by the fact that there’s a logical possibility of our being mistaken. I have practical certainty that my senses don’t systematically deceive me, even though it’s possible that they do; outside of philosophy thought experiments, the negligible probability that I’m mistaken in my belief that my senses are accurate has absolutely no influence on my practical decisions or deliberations.

Maybe, though, the anti-evidentialist doesn’t think that reason can even get us to practical certainty about religious matters. But in principle there’s no reason to think an open-minded assessment of the evidence can’t get us this kind of certainty. Of course, it might well be the case that it won’t, but this seems a rather disingenuous reason to reject evidentialism. Is it really fair to say that we don’t need to have reasons for belief in a certain manner simply because we can’t find any (or can’t find enough)? Of course, most anti-evidentialists probably wouldn’t put it in this way, but I must admit that I suspect that this is the subconscious motivator for the thesis for many. And I think that just such a suspicion is what leads so many atheists to deride talk of “leaps of faith.”

I won’t take a stand here on whether the evidence really does merit practical certainty regarding (at least some) religious propositions. (I will note, though, that it’s not obvious to me that such certainty is necessary to be religious.) But I think that the belief that it doesn’t is a bad reason to be an anti-evidentialist. It certainly seems disingenuous—many Christians seem quite willing to use arguments to bring others over to their side when it serves their purpose while insisting that true religion rests on faith, not evidence (meaning that they get to ignore philosophical challenges to religious belief). And if there are other good reasons to be anti-evidentialist, I honestly can’t see them. But let me say now what I think is correct about the “leap of faith” idea, and what I think might mistakenly motivate some to anti-evidentialism. Evidence—empirical, conceptual, or whatever—can only get us to belief or disbelief in propositions. And that’s not religion. It may be a necessary condition for religion (though I think that’s debatable), but it’s not itself religion.

Take the resurrection. It is, pretty clearly I think, an empirical and historical question whether or not Jesus of Nazareth came back to life after dying—went from being dead to being alive—after his crucifixion. Either he did or he didn’t. But this isn’t yet the resurrection, not in the full religious and theological sense of the term. I could, in theory, accept the historical event of Jesus’s coming back to life but not be a Christian. To be a Christian, something more is required. I need to construe that event in a certain way: as a salvific event, one that I should be awed by and deeply grateful for. Similarly for the existence of God. Belief in the existence of an all-powerful and infinite being who created the world and wants to be in a relationship with the intelligent beings who have evolved in that world is not faith in God. Faith in God means viewing and approaching that being in a certain way—as God, an appropriate object of religious worship and adoration. I could construe this being differently: as someone to be angry at, or to resist or ignore. As James (I think) says, “Even the demons believe—and shudder.” This is the leap of faith: the choice (and I think it is a choice) to have a certain attitude towards certain facts—the existence of a creator, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and, for that matter, one’s own life and circumstances.

This distinction between belief and attitudes applies to our ordinary mundane beliefs too. I can believe that my birthday is coming up, and view that event either as an exciting time to celebrate, a depressing reminder of how old I am, or as completely irrelevant to my life. I think that the reason that at least some Christians are anti-evidentialists, and talk about the need to take a leap of faith when it comes to belief in things like the resurrection, is because of a failure to recognize this distinction when it comes to religion. If one really believes that God exists, it doesn’t seem like a live option to ignore or reject him in the same way that it’s a live option to be indifferent about my birthday. It’s simply much harder to step back from a religious proposition the way it’s possible to step back from another kind of proposition and say “what other ways might I look at this,” or “what other meanings might this have for me”? Most, and certainly most religious, people’s natural inclination is to treat God’s existence as being of overwhelming significance—usually positive significance, although there might be some who see God primarily as someone to be feared than anything else, or an even smaller number who see him primarily as someone to oppose. Viewing his existence in any other way just doesn’t cross our minds.

So, for most people at least, in the case of religious propositions, it’s much harder to separate the factual claim involved from the attitude one ought to have regarding that claim. Then perhaps one of the motivations for anti-evidentialism is a conflation of religious attitudes with theistic beliefs. The anti-evidentialist sees, rightly, that a cold examination of “the evidence” won’t get us to that appropriate religious attitude, and, confusing that with the belief that the attitude regards, thinks we need a leap of faith to get to the belief. Really, though, where the leap of faith comes in is how one chooses to react to the propositions affirmed by the Christian (or any other) faith, if one believes them true or at least probable enough to take seriously. Hopefully, too, recognition of this would lead to seeing faith as more directly connected to works than in much current Protestant theology. If faith isn’t fundamentally about beliefs but about attitudes, then it’s easier to see how faith in God ought to lead directly to action—if Christian faith (as I think it does) invariably involves a commitment to living one’s life as a follower of Christ, then of course this ought to culminate in action (even if it won’t always—that’s where sin comes in).

So, that’s my attempt to be reasonable about religious beliefs while nevertheless recognizing what I think is an important insight of Christians wary of reason as a ground of faith. What do you think? Am I on to something, or do the anti-evidentialists have something valuable to say that I’m missing here?

Update on my life

2009-09-15T21:23:00.000-04:00

And now, for a more general update on what's going on in my life, with apologies for not posting so long. Ali and I moved into our new South Bend apartment a month and a half ago. She started classes at Notre Dame a couple weeks ago, and I started at Western Michigan University this week. We're both in two-year programs--me, a Master of Arts in philosophy, her, a Master of Theological Studies. I'm taking two classes this semester--Probability and Action & Perception--and T.A.ing for an Introduction to Philosophy class.

Although I've only just started, I've been quite happy with everything so far. Our apartment is small but perfectly liveable in, and I really like the feel of my department at WMU. My main qualm right now is that I have to commute from South Bend to Kalamazoo (where WMU is), which is about 80-85 minutes, give or take (depending on the day, and the route I take), but all things considered this is something I can live with, given that (a) it's only three times a week, and there are other people who do longer commutes more often for a longer period of time, (b) this lets Ali and I both go to schools we like while still living together, and (c) I really ought to be thankful to have a job (i.e., my teaching assistantship, which is currently our main source of income) at all right now. So all things considered I don't think I ought to complain. (Incidentally, if anyone knows of a place online where I can download books on tape for free--the phrase "books on tape" obviously being used figuratively here--let me know. I'd like to get some for the drive but am not really sure where to start, and don't really want to pay to download.)

Well, I ought to finish preparing for my Intro to Philosophy discussion sections tomorrow. Hurray for my first time leading a class section!

BBC article on Nazi war deserters

2009-09-08T22:12:00.005-04:00

Although I would like to post, hopefully sometime soon, with a general update on my life, for the moment I just want to share this BBC article which I just read. I'm no expert on WWII, or on Germany, but this really shocked me. Although the human proclivity towards nationalism combined with the general universal condemnation of conscientious objectors to war probably ought to make me less surprised; still, I really was quite surprised to learn that Nazi sentences on "war deserters" were still in effect until so recently. Actions and attitudes towards conscientious objectors in general bother me, but it nevertheless seems astonishing to me that those who had the moral clarity and courage to desert what almost everyone agrees was one of the most evil aggressors in history continued to be treated in this way until so recently. I'm also surprised I'd never heard about this before. There are still "Nazi hunters" trying to "bring to justice" people involved in the Nazi war machine (most of whom are now in their 90s or late 80s), and one hears about them all the time on the news. Why have I not heard more about efforts to bring justice for Nazi war deserters until now?

Yes, I am alive

2009-06-06T22:52:00.003-04:00

And active, too. Last month I graduated from Messiah College. In a month I get married, in two months I (we) move to South Bend, Indiana, and in three months I start studying for my M.A. in Philosophy at Western Michigan University (Ali will be starting a program in Theology at Notre Dame at the same time). I also start work as a Teaching Assistant, which I suppose will make me a breadwinner.

My last semester went well. I enjoyed all my courses, and while I could quite contentedly have spent another year at Messiah, I do feel like I am ready to be graduated, and move on. The fact that moving on means more school may help in that regard. I am looking forward, though, to being able to focus more solely on philosophy—not because I don’t enjoy the other areas that I’ve been studying (if I did I wouldn’t have studied them), but because I think I’ll be able to really delve deeper into particular areas of interest when I’m able to focus on them more exclusively. I’m only taking two courses most semesters, so I think I ought to be able to go more in depth in the areas I am studying than I’ve been able to in undergraduate work. I’m also looking forward to TAing, which should take up about half of my school time. I think it will be a good experience and a nice break from doing schoolwork all the time.

In other scholarly news, I just got my first journal publication. My paper on John Hick’s theodicy, which was also the subject of the talk I gave in Philosophy Club last fall (mentioned in my last post), has been published by The Interlocutor, an undergraduate philosophy journal that publishes just a few essays a year. You can see my essay in the latest edition here. God willing, this will be the first of many. I wrote another philosophy essay for my ethics class that my professor thinks is publishable, so I may look at trying to publish it at some point, and my Senior Honors Project advisor has talked with me some about the possibility of publishing the essay that I wrote for that (on the role of religion in an Israeli-Palestinian peace process—this being more related to my Peace & Conflict Studies major than to my philosophical studies). When I apply to Ph.D. philosophy programs in a couple years, these will hopefully make my CV look a little more impressive.

Speaking of the Arab-Israeli conflict, one big recent news item is Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world. A few minor qualms aside (primarily the lack of a stronger endorsement of democracy—which can be promoted in ways other than war—especially in a country with as autocratic a government as Egypt’s), overall I was impressed by the speech. Certainly it's not something one would ever have seen from the previous administration. If you haven’t read or listened to it, you should.

There is, no doubt, much more I could write about, but I think I'll end it there for now.

This and that

2008-11-26T16:46:00.009-05:00

Well, it has been a while. For those of you who have been living under a rock, a number of significant things have happened in my life in the past few months.

I am engaged! Alison and I got officially engaged a little over a month ago. We are going to be getting married July 11 next summer.

As for what we will be doing after that and where we will be living, that depends on what school(s) we get accepted to. Inshaa' Allah (if God wills) we will be accepted into either the same school or schools nearby each other (and get funding, too). She is applying to Master's programs in Theology, and I Doctorate programs in Philosophy. I am applying to Notre Dame, Yale, Northern Illinois University, and Western Michigan University (the last two are M.A. programs, but are well-known as good schools to go to en-route to a Ph.D.). She is applying to ND, Yale, Catholic Theological Union, and Catholic University of America. Hopefully something will work out for both of us between all of those. I'm pretty confident that something will--we should both have strong applications, and I just took my GRE a little over a month ago and did well. We'll be finishing our applications in the next month or so.

More recently, I was proud to cast my vote in what I truly do feel is a historic election. I hope and pray that our president-elect will capitalize on the hope and good will that his victory has engendered.

This semester has been going well. It's been busy, and it will continue to be busy until the semester is over, but it's been good and I'm doing well in all my classes. And although I could do without some of the homework, I've found all of my classes this semester quite interesting. As per usual my class schedule is somewhat of a smorgasbord, with six classes in five different departments. It keeps things interesting. Right now I'm reading a very interesting book for my International Relations class on the failure of Western aid to do much about third-world poverty. It's called The White Man's Burden, by William Easterly. It's a bit depressing to read just how ineffective many of the highly touted poverty reduction programs have been (and continue to be today), but if we really care about helping the world's poor we do no good in deluding ourselves into thinking that well-intentioned but ineffective programs are working when they're not. I won't rehearse Easterly's argument here (maybe in another post), but I recommend this book.

Another fun activity this semester has been Philosophy Club. We've had more participation this semester than in the past, and we've had some interesting speakers and discussions. A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of presenting in it; I spoke about the problem of evil and John Hick's theodicy (the subject of a paper I wrote in Oxford). Because we were able to get alternate chapel credit for the event (Messiah students need to attend a certain number of chapels throughout the semester, and some of those can be "alternate chapel" events in evenings, which are often student-organized), a lot more people than usual came, meaning that our usual classroom was very crowded, with more people than there were chairs (in retrospect, we ought to have foreseen this and used a bigger room that week). The talk went pretty well, I thought, although because some people were there pretty much just for the chapel credit not everyone really seemed to be listening. This is not really surprising--in our common chapel many students do homework or other stuff rather than listen to the speaker. In my talk, there were a few students who were definitely doing homework, a couple who were texting on their cellphones, and one who was blatantly sleeping (it's not that he just fell asleep accidentally; he had his head down on the desk on his arms as if he meant to be sleeping). Now, most people weren't like this, but those who were could be very distracting. I now know what our common chapel speakers feel like.

We just got back from our Thanksgiving Break, which I spent at Alison's house. Not quite as exotic as places certain people went over the break, but relaxing nevertheless. And very fattening. Or it would have been if I were actually capable of gaining weight. I think I ate enough for about three weeks over the last week, though, and I ate enough Pumpkin Pie to last me until next Thanksgiving. Not only did I have all the Thanksgiving food (times two for both sides of the family, plus the Thanksgiving feast my apartment prepared just before the break), I also had birthday food (I turned 22 a week ago) and general "my daughter and her fiancee are home so I'm going to make them lots of food" from Ali's mom.

The semester is almost over now. We only have a week and a half left, and then exams. I'll be at Ali's house for a few days and then flying to Manitoba with Vaughn a couple days before Christmas. I will, however, be staying in Steinbach for a few weeks before coming back to school because I want to get to my friend Janelle's wedding in mid-January. I'll be missing the first week and a half of January-Term, but that's okay because I'll be working on my Honors Project that term rather than taking a formal class, and I can do my work for that as well at home as I can at school (well, maybe not quite as well, but I can do some work at home, at least).

That about does it for goings-on in my life. I leave you with an encouraging news story about where our society is headed. I just hope our new machine overlords are kind.

What I've been up to

2008-08-03T15:32:00.003-04:00

I see it's been awhile since my last entry. I've been rather busy--it seems that the most time-consuming stuff in my summer was all in the second half of it. From June 29 through July 19 I was working for Camps with Meaning, Mennonite Church Manitoba's camping organization. They run three camps throughout the province, and after staff training week at Assiniboia, outside of Winnipeg, I spent two weeks counseling at Koinonia, which is in the west of Manitoba, quite close to the International Peace Garden, and about a four hour's drive from Steinbach.

My first week at Koinonia was a little different--it was an "AD-Venture" week, meaning that the campers were Adults with Disabilities, rather than children. I had never really done any work with the mentally handicapped before, so this was a new experience for me. It was at times very stressful, especially because the cabin that Chris, my co-counselor, and I were counseling contained some of the highest needs campers. Even so, I found it very rewarding, and am glad that I did it. I could have done without the tornado warning on the last night, though, where we had to wake up all the campers and get them into the Lodge basement until we were sure we were safe. Thankfully the tornado didn't touch down anywhere near us.

The week after that was Junior week, meaning the campers were aged 7-12 or so, with most being in the 8 to 10 range. My cabin that week was pretty good, with the exception of one camper who was, to put it politely, a little hell-raiser. At least I got some satisfaction when he lost his voice near the end of the week, which was not surprising given that he been yelling literally all week (yelling was his primary form of communication). That one trouble camper notwithstanding, however, all in all it was a good week.

Incidentally, one of the things that I really appreciated about working at Camp Koinonia was the emphasis that Camps with Meaning places on values that are dear to me, from peace to environmentalism to social justice. They are very intentional about creation care and teaching the kids to love and care for creation, which I think is a wonderful thing. And they really would go the extra mile to make sure that they were practicing what they were preaching, such as making sure that their staff t-shirts were not produced in sweatshops. This may seem like a small thing, but so many Christian organizations simply don't even think about these things, and it was nice to be working for a camp that really tried to put them into practice.

At the end of Junior week, then, I came back home to Steinbach. There is, of course, no rest for the weary, and so only two days after getting back, I started in on my Greek course at Prov, giving me practically no time to unwind or process my time at camp, or blog for that matter. I am now halfway through that course, meaning I have now finished the equivalent of one semester of Biblical Greek. It's been tough, but I am amazed at how much I have learned in such a short span of time. One might think that four weeks is way too short a period of time to cram two semesters of a language into, and while in a way it really is, there definitely is an advantage to studying a language like this. Since I am not taking any other classes right now and don’t have any other major commitments, I can (even if I don’t always) invest considerable time in studying outside of class, and so always stay focused on learning the language. Since we are doing everything in such a short span of time, everything that I’ve learned is relatively fresh in my mind, even if it was on one of the first days of class (which is only a week and a half ago!), meaning that I don’t forget rules from earlier in the course by the time the mid-term rolls around. Because I’m constantly doing Greek, and building off of everything that I’ve done earlier, it really does stick better than it might otherwise. Of course, the real question is whether it will stick after, but that will depend on me, I suppose.

On Friday we had our mid-term exam for the course, and I think that I did pretty well. We do get a little bit of a break this weekend because Monday is a Civic Holiday, so we don't have class. But I've still got plenty of exercises to do and vocabulary to learn before Tuesday. My mom's brother and his family are here to visit us this weekend, so I've been spending some time with them too. Then after this weekend I've got two more weeks of Greek, and then just a few more days before I'm heading back to Messiah. The plan looks to be to fly to Toronto on August 20 and drive down to Pennsylvania with Vaughn the day after. I'm going back early to help with the international student orientation--classes start at the beginning of September. I'm sad to see the summer finish so soon but I'm looking forward to this next semester. It'll be a little weird, too, finding that I don't know most of the people at the school--given that there will be a new First Year class, I don't know any of the upcoming Sophomores, and many of the Juniors (and a few of the Seniors) I know will be studying abroad themselves now that I'm coming back. It will be nice to see many of my friends again, though, especially those that I have not seen this last year on account of being abroad. There will be much catching up to do, I'm sure.

As for now, I have Greek to do, and relatives to visit with. I believe they are watching Canadian Bacon downstairs.

URL Change

2008-06-19T22:29:00.000-04:00

Just so you're aware, I'm going to be changing the URL of this blog to climenhaga.blogspot.com in a week or so. That address did not use to be free, if memory serves, but now it looks like it is, and I was looking for something other than my full name to serve as my URL...

Also, for those interested, I'm starting to put pictures from last semester up on Facebook.

Cleaning

2008-06-12T23:52:00.002-04:00

It took a lot of work, but my room is finally clean! And organized! Or at least, it's as much of both of those as it's going to get this summer. It'd be even better organized if only the paper size in Britain and the Middle East was the same as the paper size here in North America--dang foreign papers not fitting into my boxes.

Now, onto the twenty other things I need to do...

The past couple months

2008-06-07T00:38:00.005-04:00

It has been a while, eh? I suppose it's about time I updated this thing--I mean, with more than my rantings on the latest goings-on in the U.S. election campaign. For those interested in what has been going on in my life since my last post (on that topic), I finished up my time at Oxford, and managed to produce essays that I was pretty pleased with. After that Kayla, Alison, Alexandra and I began our foray around the European mainland. We flew to Rome, and after spending a few days seeing the sites there, hit up such other Italian cities as Naples (visiting the ruins of Pompeii, which are not far off, while there), Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. Then it was on to Switzerland, where we visited Bern and Geneva, and then to France, where we spent a weekend in Taizé before finishing our trip off in Paris. It was a wonderful trip, although by the end of it I was ready to come home. Highlights included Taizé and most of Italy, especially Pompeii, the Vatican, and the various sites of Ancient Rome.

Kayla left us in Taizé to join her mom to do two more weeks of traveling, but as for the rest of us, we flew back to the United States on 1 May. After a few days at Ali's house, I flew to Winnipeg via Toronto, and rediscovered everything I'd forgotten I hated about Air Canada. Never one to be reasonable with my schedule, two days after getting back I started up a summer course at the University of Manitoba, which I thankfully finished on the last day of May. See, I have these annoying "general education" course requirements that I need to take to graduate from Messiah, and I had the bright idea of taking a couple this summer, so as to have more room for other courses that I want to take senior year. One of my requirements is a lab science, and so the course that I took at the U of M was Biology. Later this summer I'll be taking (Biblical) Greek at Providence College & Seminary, where my dad teaches, to fulfill my language requirement. Three weeks from now I will hopefully be counseling for Camps with Meaning for a few weeks before beginning my Greek course. As for the rest of this month, I have various things I need to do to keep me occupied, not least of which is figuring out what the heck I'm doing after college. Fun times.

As for the moment, it’s nice to finally have a bit of a real break--Europe, of course, was a break, but it was a different kind of a break than one gets relaxing at home. Unfortunately I have many things that I need to get done this month, not least of which is trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing after college. And then it will be off to camp, and then back to school, before I know it.

The more things change...

2008-06-06T16:58:00.003-04:00

One of the themes that has dominated the 2008 election campaign has been "change." Obama started it, of course, but Clinton picked it up and started touting "change with experience," and now McCain is picking it up too and claiming that there are right and wrong kinds of change, and that he is the candidate to bring about the right kind. Now, we all saw how well Clinton's strategy worked, and I don't know that McCain's will be any more successful. But that's not what this post is about.

No, this post is about the fact that despite all this talk of change, and despite the many disagreements that the three (now two) candidates have, there is one thing they all agree on: the United States supports Israel, no ifs, ands, or buts. In fact, watching the past couple months of this campaign, in which the issue of Israel has figured more prominently, each candidate seems determined to outdo the others in their support for Israel. Clinton promises to "totally annihilate" the Iranians, should they attack Israel. McCain insists that anyone who so much as talks to the Iranians, or any other "enemy" of Israel, for that matter, is not a friend of Israel (and Bush chimes in with his Nazi appeasement comment). And now Obama has made clear that he is--for the purposes of this election campaign, at least--going to be just as much of a pro-Israel hardliner as the rest of them.

Less than a day after his historic primary victory, Obama--along with McCain and Clinton--spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. His speech was, to be fair, not as bad as the neoconservative nonsense one often hears from those pandering to AIPAC, but it was not change I can believe in, either. He said some good things, things that members of AIPAC need to hear, such as that being a friend of Israel does, in fact, mean talking to Israel's enemies (as the Israeli government itself of course recognizes--by Bush's criteria Olmert himself is a Nazi appeaser), that the Iraq war has made Israel (and America) less, not more, safe, that Israel needs to stop expanding its settlements, as it has repeatedly agreed to do (and repeatedly, even under such moderates as Rabin, failed to do--although Obama did not mention that bit), and that any Palestinian state must be "contiguous and cohesive."

Obama also made clear that military action against Iran must remain "on the table," but while this is nonsense (the U.S. does not have the capacity, given the current state of our military, to invade Iran, and even if we did, it would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, even if the alternative is the country getting nuclear capabilities), it is nonsense any American politician must pay lip service too. And not even just those that are trying to get elected--any American president or diplomat negotiating with Iran is going to pretend that we have the capacity and will to attack them as a last resort, even though we and they both know we don't. So that part of Obama's speech didn't bother me too much.

No, what bothered me was his commitment to $30 billion in military assistance to Israel, his statement that the United States "must never force Israel to the negotiating table" (he went on to say, discussing negotiations with Syria, that "neither should we ever block negotiations when Israelis’ leaders decide that they may serve Israeli interests"), and most disturbingly of all, his insistence that Jerusalem must "remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."

Now, Senator Obama, would you care to explain to me why the United States, which is already facing an economic crisis, needs to give $30 billion in military aid to a country with by far the most powerful military in the Middle East, and one of the most powerful in the world? A wealthy, first world nation which is more than capable of looking after itself, if only we would stop spoon-feeding it? What on Earth has Israel done to deserve that money? Why not give it to India, a democratic country and long-time ally of the U.S. that could really use such money? Or any number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa? Or why not use it to help solve our healthcare or education crises at home? Israel does not need $30 billion. No state in the region can even come close to threatening it. The only real potential danger is Iran, and I really don't think that even a nuclear armed Iran (which is still a long ways away) would have the stupidity to nuke Israel. If it did, Israel could retaliate and "totally annihilate" (to use Senator Clinton's phrase) Iran in return, and so could we, for that matter. And take nukes out of the picture and the only real threat facing Israel is terrorist attacks. And while terrorist attacks in Israel are a real problem (although hardly a threat to its integrity as a whole), they are not going to stop because Israel gets bigger and badder guns; they are only going to stop when we actually work out a peace agreement in the region.

Which brings me to my next point. Peace may come about from Israel's own initiatives, but it is very unlikely. If Obama truly is committed to an Arab-Israeli peace process, he is very likely going to have to "force" Israel to negotiate even when it doesn't want to. What, Senator, is the ultimate goal of U.S. foreign policy in the region? Is it advancing Israel's interests, as seen by whoever its leaders happen to be at that time, no matter what the cost, or is it peace? You can't have it both ways. If it is peace, then the U.S. is going to have to pressure Israel, just as it will have to pressure the Palestinians, and all other parties involved. But, quite frankly, it will likely have to pressure Israel more, for two reasons: the first being that Israel is the higher power party in the conflict, and thus is going to need to sacrifice more but be unwilling to do so; the second being that the U.S., being such a close ally of Israel, has much more sway over it than it does over the Palestinians. The U.S. administration is probably one of the only parties in the world that really has the power to pressure Israel to make the sacrifices that will be necessary for peace, and if we want to make peace we damn well better be prepared to do so.

And finally, Mr. Obama, Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel now, at least not according to the U.S. and the international community. Tel Aviv is, and it will remain so until Israel and the Palestinians are willing to make the sacrifices necessary for peace, which will include a (politically) "divided" Jerusalem as the capital of two independent states. Mr. Obama, Jerusalem is divided now--not economically, no, but demographically. As for the former, most agree that the city must remain connected economically; anything else would simply be a disaster for the economies of both countries. As for the latter, dividing Jerusalem would hardly be a problem at all (aside from the Old City, perhaps the stickiest part of the whole deal) were it not for all the settlements that right-wing Israelis have built around the city in occupied land, in a deliberate attempt to make it impossible to divide the city. Those settlements need to go, at least as many of them as are feasible. The Palestinians will never accept an agreement in which East Jerusalem is not their capital. It simply will not happen. And the most maddening thing is that what Obama has said here is not current U.S. policy. As partial a broker as the U.S. is, our government's current policy towards Jerusalem is that it is an issue to be dealt with in negotiations. In the Clinton Parameters, the closest we ever got to an agreement in the conflict, Jerusalem was to be divided. No other kind of agreement is possible.

Much of what Obama has said was not that different from what he's said in the past. His tone was changed somewhat, perhaps, but he's always made clear that he is committed to Israel's security and against negotiations with Hamas (another matter on which I disagree with him). The comment on Jerusalem, however, was unprecedented, and was quite frankly rather stupid. It will come back to bite him later, I can almost guarantee it. Now, for the time being, Obama's speech will probably gain him political support. Most of those who, like me, disagree with much of what he has said will still vote for him. Meanwhile, he may be able to gain some support from those who were worried about his pro-Israel credentials. But I am worried that some of the things he's said will make it more difficult for him to be an effective broker for peace in the Middle East. It's not so much that I'm worried about what he actually believes. That does concern me, yes, but--assuming that he actually believes the more egregious things he said--people's views can change, and I'm confident that a President Obama could be made to see reason on issues like Jerusalem. No, what I'm more worried about is what he's said, and what it will say to the Palestinians. Palestinians like Obama, or they did, at any rate. That's a rare thing in American politicians, and it's not a bad thing, whatever John McCain might have us believe. Obama had before him the possibility of being the first president since Jimmy Carter who might actually be capable of being respected by the Arabs, and I'm afraid that he's just thrown it away. Many have already condemned his comment on Jerusalem. I'm afraid that many Palestinians who, like many Americans, saw in Obama the possibility of change, the possibility of a different kind of America, will have been disenchanted by this. They were willing to give us a second chance, to believe that we're not all like Bush. And they had great faith in Obama. Now they'll look at this, and they'll conclude that the U.S. really is hopeless, that no matter who our president is, we never will stand up for the Palestinians who are suffering and never get serious with Israel.

Update: It would appear that Obama is already trying to backtrack on his Jerusalem comment, as his campaign seeks to "clarify" his remarks so as to suggest that he didn't actually say what he clearly meant to say. Now, on the one hand this is a good thing, because as I said, east Jerusalem will need to serve as a capital for an independent Palestine, no ifs, ands, or buts, and so I'm glad to see that Obama is (apparently) in fact open to that reality. But of course now he's going to be accused of flip-flopping and intentionally misleading, and not entirely without justification either. And he's going to have to walk a very, very thin line should this issue come up again, because if AIPAC feels they've been lied to, they have the power to do a lot of damage to Obama's candidacy. These guys watch politicians like hawks (no pun intended) to discern their positions on Israel, and they are not afraid to tear apart people they don't like--and they have the power to. That's no doubt a large part of the reason that Obama and McCain both felt obligated to pander to them so much to begin with, never mind both of their commitments to lessen the power of special interests groups in Washington. The best thing Obama can hope for now is for this issue to fade away and not get asked about again until after he's elected, at which point he can actually show the Arabs he does favor a reasonable division of Jerusalem. Unfortunately, however, he can't unsay what he's already said, and much of the damage is already done--not in the United States or Israel, but in the Arab world. We'll see if they're willing to give him a second chance.

Ironically, when John McCain--understandably--used this as an opportunity to attack his opponent as inconsistent, he was unwilling to make a clear statement on Jerusalem himself when asked. "The point is Jerusalem is undivided. Jerusalem is the capital." Anyone care to tell me just what that means? He went on to say that the U.S. should move its embassy to Jerusalem immediately--a curious thing for a government whose official stance is that the status of Jerusalem is to be determined in the negotiations to do. (In fact, Congress passed a resolution in 1995 to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and the president--be it Clinton or Bush--has repeatedly refrained from doing so, no doubt because it would be an incredibly stupid thing for the U.S. to do so long as the peace process is [supposed to be] going on.) Clearly McCain is just as afraid of being straight about this as Obama is.

The Oxford System

2008-03-31T20:46:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in the previous post, we are now in the post-term part of our semester here, in which we do stuff unique to our specific program. Good as this stuff is, the real draw of Oxford is the tutorials that we take in Full Term. Having now experienced one of these terms, I would like spend some time extolling the virtues of Oxford's educational system. Now, don't get me wrong. I like Messiah, and I feel I've learned a lot in my two years there (having spent all of this third year abroad). Indeed, I think my education there prepared me well for this experience in many ways. But it's truly astonishing how much I feel I learned in my eight weeks of Full Term here, and I think much of it has to do with Oxford's unique system. Now, it may be that in some fields what I have to say here is not as relevant. Certainly for Philosophy Oxford's system is wonderful; but I can see where with other subjects other systems might be better. (Still, I think that the critical thinking encouraged by Philosophy is useful in all fields.)

Firstly, there is a real emphasis on reading. One reads ridiculous amounts for each tutorial, and has to write an essay on the subject the reading pertains to. Although one does attend lectures, these do not necessarily correspond to one's study, and so one is relying, more often than not, solely on books for one's essays. This is good for a number of reasons. It gives you many different viewpoints on a single subject from very different thinkers, forcing you to learn how to critically evaluate them. You cannot just take authors at their word, elsewise you'd end up with contradictory beliefs (not that that doesn't sometimes happen anyway, of course). You learn to understand and criticize their arguments and develop your own point of view.

In contrast, when you have a professor teaching a class with 20-some students, you typically have her giving lectures that either (a) present a wide variety of viewpoints, some of which she agrees with, and some which she doesn't, or (b) generally reflect her own viewpoint. Now, both of these lecture styles have their merits, but the problem is that with the first, you have a person who is trying to get students to understand arguments that she does not agree with, and so will inevitably not be able to argue for in the same way as someone who does agree with them will; and with the second, the students may get the impression that the only valid point of view is the teacher's, or even that they should not question the teacher's views and come up with their own (quite the contrary is the case if you want a good education, I think!). Introductory "subject texts" are even worse. Don't get me wrong, they are helpful as an introduction to a subject--but they are again (typically) presenting views rather than arguing for them. (Better texts are ones which contain various relevant essays on the field, although even then one of course realizes that the editor is being inevitably selective.) Here at Oxford, you read essays and articles and book chapters by people who are making cases for various contradictory positions, and you must find your own voice, and not just mimic that of one of the authors (or of the professor).

As mentioned, one does attend lectures, which are of varying degrees of relevance to what one is studying. For example, I attended a lecture series on Theory of Politics, which of course corresponded to the tutorial of the same name, but generally covered different topics than what I was writing about. I attended The Existence of God for my Philosophy of Religion class, and a couple of times the lecturer spoke on what I was writing about, but most weeks the lectures and my essay topics were unrelated. And my other two lecture series--The Christian Doctrine of Creation and The Enlightenment--had little to directly do with either of my classes.

Lectures at Oxford are generally of the two types I mentioned above--outlining ideas or presenting the lecturer's own views. Theory and Creation were both of the former type; Existence and Enlightenment were both of the latter. But the nice thing about this is that the lecturer who is arguing for a specific view is really free to argue that, to present his case as strongly as he can, and we, the students, are free to make of it what we will. He is not involved in grading us; and there is accordingly not the same kind of pressure to blithely agree with the lecturer as I think there sometimes is in American institutions. Of course, this does not mean one cannot agree with the lecturer. After all, these people are no intellectual slouches, and usually have some smart things to say! My lecturer for Existence of God, for instance, made me give more credence to the argument from religious experience for God's existence than I would have otherwise (and than I did when I wrote my essay on it First Week). But there is still a real sense of developing one's own viewpoints, and not simply inheriting the views of others. (I have assumed this to be a virtue. I suppose this could be disputed. I do not mean to say that there is no place for acceptance of authority over one's own personal views or ideas, as for instance in certain religious cases, but I think this is typically taken much too far.)

Finally, the endless essay writing, overwhelming as it may be, plays a key part in forcing one to think about and come to grips with the subject matter. This is especially true because of the Oxford practice of reading your essay aloud to the tutor in the tutorial. A little nerve-wracking at first, I'll grant, but actually a wonderful academic idea, I think. It's easy to decide you don't want to do your work and that you'll hand in a poorly written and sloppily researched essay when all you get is a bad grade on your transcript. (And with professors who give you a good grade anyway, it's even easier.) But when you're personally reading your essay to your tutor, and having to defend it to him if he challenges you on it, suddenly the grade is not the key motivating factor in writing well--not feeling like a fool in front of your tutor is! Suffering through a tutorial where you're presenting a poor argument in a badly written paper is a very painful experience; at least, it was for me the two or three times I was not at all happy with my work. So, you learn to write well. And to read well. And to argue well. And to think through what you say.

I hope the above doesn't sound too intimidating! Most tutors are really quite nice, and understand the pressures of Oxford. They won't chew you out for writing a bad paper or two. But I found I was not satisfied with myself when I presented a bad paper to them. And writing and presenting a good essay is an enormously satisfying experience, especially when you can then discuss the topic with and have your ideas challenged and refined by your tutor.

All this is, again, not to vilify the other kinds of educational systems in post-secondary institutions. Classes with many students in them provide an opportunity (whether or not this is always taken) for discussion and debate among peers not always as present in the Oxford system. They also give the professor the ability to coordinate learning in a way not as possible in a "research-it-yourself" system like Oxford's. Still, too much coordination and direction can stifle independent thinking and the development of key intellectual skills. And while discussion and debate is a good thing, it has been my experience that in college classes it often takes place among students who are at very different points in their understanding of the subject matter and their ability to critically engage it (and when the subject matter is contentious, as for example in religion and politics, many simply choose not to critically engage it as it means challenging their preconceived notions)--although admittedly this is worst in courses that fulfill general education requirements for some, and not as bad in ones that are only taken by majors. In Oxford's more individualized system, each person is able to learn in the way that best suits him, and truly develop his own ideas. While I don't expect to see American colleges and universities adopting the tutorial system any time soon, I think that there is much that they could learn from it.

Ireland, Scotland, and Homework

2008-03-28T19:21:00.000-04:00

Okay, so here's the promised update on my life. Which I'm typing mostly because I don't feel like doing the reading I ought to be doing.

We are nearing the end of our semester. Only a few more weeks (and two more essays!), and I'm done my second semester abroad. Then one more year at Messiah, and then it's off to the real world! Or something like that.

Full term ended a few weeks ago, and with it my Philosophy of Religion and Theory of Politics tutorials. I ended up pretty pleased with how well I did in both tutorials (I haven't gotten grades back yet; I'm just judging by my tutors' comments and my own feelings about my work). My first few essays for both classes were pretty shaky, but after the first few weeks I think I got a better hang of things--both the Oxford system and the subjects I was studying.

I wrote eight papers for my Philosophy of Religion class, and four for Theory of Politics. My topics for them were, respectively:

1. Religious Experience
2. Reformed Epistemology
3. Wittgenstein and Religion
4. Religious Language
5. The Ontological Argument
6. The Problem of Evil
7. The Relationship between God and Morality
8. Religious Pluralism

1. John Rawls' political philosophy
2. Political Obligation
3. Distributive Justice
4. Transnational Justice

The fun part of these papers is that I'm supposed to argue for what I believe, and not just say what other people think. Always a bit difficult when I'm not entirely sure what I believe, or when I don't even really understand the topic (as was the case with numbers 2 and 3 in Philosophy of Religion). But as mentioned above, it got better as the term went on. I actually found it a very helpful way to figure out what I believed and why I believed it, and came to some interesting conclusions in the process--although naturally I by no means have everything figured out on these topics. I hardly have room to begin to expound my ideas in this post, so I won't try; but (maybe) look for some future posts in which I wax philosophical about selected topics.

A couple of weeks ago we had our spring break. Alison, Alexandra, Kayla, and I flew to Ireland, visiting Dublin and Newgrange. I won't try to recount the trip here. Suffice to say that we saw some cool cathedrals and castles, beautiful countryside (even if it was always raining), and enjoyed some good cultural experiences as well (like the constant raining).

We also saw this in Christchurch Cathedral's crypt. Apparently they ran into the organ and were mummified.

After our break we began out post-term program, in which we have two courses that we take with other SCIO students. The first is British Landscapes, in which we learn about the history and culture of Britain and write two essays chosen from a baffling array of options. I turned my first one in earlier this week; it was on medieval Oxford and to what extent it was free from church control. I'm probably going to write my second on Marxism in Britain. The second is a seminar in whatever discipline we are focusing in, so in my case Philosophy. For that we have to write one long essay; mine is on the problem of evil and John Hick's theodicy.

Our daily schedule now consists of meeting at Wycliffe Hall at 9:30, watching a video in a history series for British Landscapes, having tea, hearing a lecture from either one of the SCIO staff or an Oxford professor (or perhaps some other visiting scholar) on any array of topics, and then having lunch. Additionally, we'll have our seminars some days, four in total throughout the semester. And some days we do none of this but instead go on field trips. So far we have visited Iffley, in south Oxford, Hampton Court Palace, and Portsmouth.

Last weekend was our Easter break, for which we got off Friday and Monday. I went to Glasgow, Scotland, for most of it with a few other students. Again, I can't recount the whole trip here, but will just mention that the highlights included visiting Stirling Castle and (the site of the Battle of) Stirling Bridge, attending an Easter Service at Glasgow Cathedral, browsing the "St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art" (I think I have the name right), and seeing a petrified forest. The not-so highlights included spending two hours looking for a specific pub (and upon finding it, discovering that it was way too crowded to enjoy the live music we were going there for), sitting in freezing bus stations, and being foiled in our attempts to ride the Glasgow Subway all the way around the city (on account of it closing early on Easter Sunday).

As for now, we only have two weeks left on the program, and I only have two essays left to write. On 12 April we leave Oxford, and Alison, Alexandra, Kayla, and I are going to spend two and a half more weeks gallivanting around Italy, Switzerland, and France. And then it's back to Manitoba for the summer for me...

A More Perfect Union

2008-03-28T15:15:00.001-04:00

Well, Vaughn beat me to it, but as soon as I watched this speech, which I did a day or two after it was made, I decided I wanted to make a post on it. Mind you, I also have intentions of posting an entry updating y'all on my life here in Oxford, and one extolling the virtues of the Oxford educational system. But those will have to wait for the time being, if I want to chime in on the current hot topic while it's still hot, or at least warm.

Firstly, I will echo my brother and say that you should watch the speech. It truly is worth watching, and I think that it will be remembered as one of the most significant political speeches of our time.

Unlike Vaughn, however, I will deign to add my voice to ongoing conversation about the speech (after all, what else are blogs for?), and add my own commentary/observations on the speech and the issues surrounding it.

Before I get to the speech itself, I’d like to comment on Reverend Wright, and the character assassination of him that has taken place. To most or at least many Americans, I imagine, he is simply a hatemonger and a racist; full stop. But of course the statements of his that we’ve all heard and seen are taken very much out of context, and anyway do not reflect the overall character of the man. As Obama said in his speech, if all he knew of Wright were a few spliced sound bytes on YouTube, he would not think much of him either. But obviously this is far, far from being the full story of this man. I’ve read up on Wright some and watched a couple of his sermons with his “inflammatory” remarks put in context, and from what I see, he is by no means a racist or hate-monger, even if he certainly says some controversial things. Indeed, he seems to actually have a very good grasp of Biblical hermeneutics and theology and to be a very powerful and engaging speaker. He also has an impressive academic record and has done a lot of work in community organizing and poverty reduction in Chicago.

In his sermon on 9/11, Wright said a lot more than “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”—he cited a respected American ambassador in suggesting that the attacks were largely to blame in previous U.S. foreign policy, a view shared by many academics, diplomats, and frankly most non-Americans (indeed, I’ve been interested in comments posted on YouTube and other sites in response to this comment by non-Americans, who have mostly said “What’s the big deal? Doesn’t everyone know this?”). His larger point was not that the 9/11 attacks were a good thing, but that violence is always bad, no matter who does it, and that it inevitably begets more violence. Now, was a sermon given a few days after the 9/11 attacks the most appropriate time to make these comments? Probably not—and I can certainly see how, in that context, his remarks could be seen as hate-filled. But Wright was not just spouting hate here; his overall point was, I think, sound, and his grasp on the reality of the situation probably firmer than most Americans’.

Additionally, it seems that many of Wright’s comments spring from liberation theology, a tradition he and his church come from which is generally a lot closer to what the Bible actually teaches than mainstream American theology (which is of course not to say that it is infallible). And comments that from our vantage points may seem to be hateful towards whites are probably in his view rather intended to lift up blacks. Saying that God loves blacks and God loves the poor is not the same as saying that God hates whites or God hates the rich (things Wright has never said).

So in sum, judging Wright on a few controversial-sounding remarks which are made in impassioned moments as part of larger sermons which were not focused on the hate some find implicit in these remarks, is not a good way to do things.

Incidentally, I have been interested in the way that many who find Wright’s statements shocking have said “well most black Americans can’t possibly share his views.” Now, I’m no expert on race in America myself, but I’m rather skeptical that the makers of such comments understand the mindset of American blacks better than Wright or Obama. If Wright’s views are so fringe, why is his church so popular in Chicago? If so many blacks disagree with him, why are an overwhelming majority supporting Obama despite his associations with Wright, with polling after recent events showing no signs of change in that regard? Imposing one’s value judgments on what is right and wrong and then saying that African-Americans in general couldn’t possibly believe this kind of thing because one think it’s wrong is not avoiding racism; it is closing one’s eyes and ears to reality.

As for the speech. I think one of the most striking aspects of it was its nuance, its refusal to treat these highly contentious issues of race, patriotism, etc. as one-sided, as black and white (pun not intended), as all too many Americans are wont to do. In it, Obama essentially acknowledged the validity of different, even conflicting, narratives. The different races in the United States have very different stories to tell, and Obama is saying that we need to listen to all of them. He acknowledged both the importance of historical and contemporary injustices against blacks and legitimate concerns that ground white anger over what they see as “reverse racist” policies. Whereas in the past Obama has tended to downplay the importance of race, because typically when it gets brought up it is in an unproductive and divisive manner, in this speech he has said: Actually, race is real, the divisions between the races are real, and we need to acknowledge and understand these realities before we can transcend them and come together as fellow human beings. Much as some conservatives might like it, ignoring problems of race do not make them go away. They need to be actively confronted.

And for those who view Obama as a socialist or European-style liberal, I would point your attention to his interesting acknowledgement that American welfare policies “may have worsened,” rather than helped, the situations of many black Americans, by giving them a hand out rather than a hand up (those last aren’t Obama’s words; I’m clarifying what I think he was getting at here).

Now, I did not agree with everything in Obama’s speech. I was particularly disappointed with the quick one-sided gloss he gave of Israel and the Middle East: admonishing Wright for viewing “the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.” Now, sadly no American politician can get very far without professing “full support” for Israel (whatever that means), and I realize Obama could probably never properly describe the complexity of that part of the world without committing political suicide. Still, I was disappointed with this oversimplified statement about Israel and radical Islam, and I can only hope that Obama’s real understandings of the region are more nuanced. For, evil and inexcusable as Islamic terrorism may be, it is rooted in (to use Obama’s phrase) “legitimate concerns,” and real injustices that many Arabs, especially Palestinians, have faced. To ignore that, and to uncritically view Israel as a “stalwart ally” (Against whom? Moderate Arab states that we could have very good relations with if we didn’t uncritically support Israel?) is to make the same mistake that so many are making with Reverend Wright. (And of course the inverse can be said to those—such as, I imagine, Reverend Wright—who would view Israel’s presence and actions in the Middle East as nothing other than racism and imperialism, and ignore the realities of Jewish history, the Holocaust, Arab violence against Jews, etc.)

But, as I have said, no politician could actually say that and have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing well in a U.S. presidential race. The rest of Obama’s speech has probably already given the American people as much nuance and complexity as they are capable of accepting. And anyway, while I disagree with some of the things Obama has said about Israel and the Middle East, his policies are a fair sight better than Clinton’s or McCain’s!

And of course that’s just one small part of a speech that I otherwise largely agreed with and found truly inspiring. I don’t agree with Obama on everything, but this speech has definitely increased the admiration I already felt for him, and I would definitely encourage you to watch it, if you haven’t already.

Oxford

2008-01-20T15:44:00.000-05:00

Please note that I am making no commitments to blog consistently this term. However, I'm currently procrastinating from some work I ought to be doing and feel like typing a blog post. So here you are.

I am typing this post from Oxford, England, where I am studying this term, through SCIO (Scholarship and Christianity and Oxford), the UK branch of the CCCU (Council for Christian Colleges and Universities). I suppose I ought to find it significant that I am studying at the oldest English-speaking university in the world, and I suppose I do, but to be honest I'm more focused on my studies, which I suppose is probably true of most students at Oxford! This was the first week of “full term,” as they call it. Last week was our orientation week. Nothing particularly noteworthy to report from it that I think of--except for our field trip, which I ought to give at least a slight account of.

The Thursday before last, everyone on the program went to Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and Salisbury Cathedral for our British Landscapes Course (the bulk of which will be happening after the regular term here, during which we're taking tutorials at Oxford). The first one (Stonehenge) went without incident, although the weather was already very nasty when we got there. The wind was blowing quite hard and the rain was coming down. So we all were back on the coach within thirty minutes to an hour. It definitely wasn’t as nice of a visit to Stonehenge as the one with the Chamber Choir! Still fun, though. But where it got really fun was when we went to Old Sarum. Old Sarum is a hill fort on Salisbury Plain built in the Iron Age and later used by the Romans and Normans, and presumably other people as well. We got to Old Sarum and were crossing over what was the moat on our coach, when the bus got stuck. Apparently the driver had taken the turn too sharply, and the land bridge was pretty narrow. As he moved back and forth trying to get unstuck, the coach began to tip this way and that. To those of us on the top level of the coach (it was a double-decker), this was somewhat disconcerting, as it felt as if we might tip over on the one side. We did not (fortunately). We all got out of the coach and went to see Old Sarum. The weather was absolutely atrocious by this point. After we had seen all we wanted to see and gotten quite sick of the cold, rain, and wind all sixty or seventy of us huddled into the tiny gift shop there, which was the only real shelter available. Simon (one of our assistant directors) came and told us the news: they were not able to get the coach unstuck. However, they were getting two more coaches to come pick us up. But, because the position of our coach was dangerous, we could not go on to retrieve our stuff, and we could not even walk back across the track because there was a danger that the coach might fall over onto us. This meant to get to where we were being picked up we had to go to the other side of the fort and walk all the way around on the hill surrounding the moat. Never mind that this was relatively narrow itself and terribly muddy so that there was a real danger (especially given the weather) of someone slipping and falling and getting hurt. But we certainly got a sense for the place this way! We also got to see how well fortified it really was, and learned just how powerful that great military defense of England’s is—its weather.

There were two groups that went out from the gift shop, as they couldn’t fit us all on one coach, and I was part of the second, that left a little later. This gave me more time to bond with my fellow students and read a book in the shop about how to be a princess. There were various fun books and items in the shop that people enjoyed. I also think that they must have gotten the best business they’ve had in a long time, what with so many of us buying hot drinks and rain gear. When our group did head off, after we had walked around the moat (this took about half an hour), we got to where we were supposed to get picked up and the coach wasn’t there. And then, after waiting for about ten minutes, it started pouring. So we all ran across the street (and up a flooded driveway with a river of water coming down) into a pub/restaurant where we took shelter (and better shelter than the gift shop, too!). Eventually our coach came, and it took us on to Salisbury Cathedral as planned. We were there later than anticipated, which meant that when we took our tours in small groups, and got taken up to the top of the church spire (the tallest one in Britain), or as high up as were allowed, and went onto the balconies outside, it was dark, not to mention quite cold (although the rain had stopped by then, thank God). Nevertheless, the cathedral was cool and the view from up there was stunning. There was a café there where many people bought food, but of course I had no desire to spend money, so I decided to hold out. This paid off because it turned out that they had gotten the coach unstuck and so gotten our stuff off it and had it all waiting for us on the new coach that came to pick us up. So I now had my backpack back, with the sandwich and apple that I had packed for my lunch. It was also rather late by now, so I was glad to finally have food. So then we had our two hour coach ride back to Oxford. And the best part of it was that when we got back they had pizza and pudding (treats) waiting for us at our houses! Free food? That makes it all worth it, if you ask me.

So that trip was a bit of an adventure. The weather here sure is something else, I’ll tell you that. The bike/walking path that many of us use as a shortcut to get to places in Oxford where we need to be for school stuff has gotten quite flooded this past week. So when I was walking to a lecture with Ali last Tuesday morning (and did not know this), we got our shoes and socks absolutely soaked, and what’s worse they were like that the rest of the day, because I didn’t get back to the Vines (where I'm living) until quite late that night. Then the next day I was coming back to the Vines and thought that since I was on my bike I could take the path without getting too wet. Wrong! The water was high enough that when I pedaled through the flooded part my feet were in the water when they were at the lowest point in the pedal. Then the next day (Thursday) I again took the path to get to my Philosophy of Religion tutorial, because I was late and needed to get there as soon as possible. So this time when I got to the flooded part I took my shoes and socks off and cycled through barefoot, which (while painful at the time) turned out to be the best plan, because not too long after putting my shoes and socks back on, my feet were warm (and dry) again. A “senior scholar” (as they call them here) was cycling through after me, and had done the same thing. He said something to me to the effect of “I see you had the same idea as me.” He then told me that the weather here wasn’t usually this bad, but that that path gets flooded a lot. Then, after we had both gotten our shoes and socks back on and were starting to ride off, he said something to the effect of, “Right then! Off to Philosophy of Neuroscience.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one going through the flooded path trying to get to a tutorial on time!

Last weekend, after orientation was over, we had an optional field trip to London (i.e., it had nothing to do with our class, and we had to pay for it ourselves), which I opted to go on. It was fun, and consisted of a lot of walking. I don’t know that I saw anything I hadn’t seen before in London. The coolest part was probably getting to St. Paul’s cathedral for evensong, which was beautiful. Then after that we all went out to eat at this Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, which had really good food.

This past week was, as I said, the first week of full term. As such, I had my first two tutorial meetings in it, and attended a number of lectures. Some of the more interesting ones were: the Christian Doctrine of Creation (Alistair McGrath is giving one of the talks, in fifth week I think, for this one), the Existence of God, and the Philosophy of Beauty. Within the next couple weeks I should get an idea of which lecture series I will be consistently attending (I need to attend four Philosophy ones for my tutorials and seminar, but I will probably attend one or two more on top of that just for interest’s sake). In the Existence of God lecture, the lecturer was describing the varieties of religious experience according to Richard Swinburne (who I had just read on this exact subject for my tutorial). One of Swinburne’s types is one of “having no sensory experiences at all,” or something to that effect. It is a rather puzzling description and one which someone asked the lecturer to explain. He responded by saying that it is difficult to explain, but that some mystics speak of things like “entering into a state of unknowing,” and that this is what Swinburne is talking about. He then said that understanding exactly what a “state of unknowing” is is difficult, at which point some clever chap in the audience piped up and said “I know what the state of unknowing is. I’m experiencing it right now,” to which everyone had a good laugh. It was well done.

The workload here is already proving to be ridiculous. I'm taking two tutorials, Philosophy of Religion and Theory of Politics, and have already pulled an all-nighter finishing a paper for the latter. Hopefully that won't become a habit. However, I am interested in what I'm studying, which makes it all worth it (I think). And I quite like the tutorial system, from what I've experienced of it so far at least. Instead of getting lectured at by your tutor, your time with him or her is really more of a conversation, where you present your essay and then discuss the concepts you've been reading about. In the two tutorials I've had so far I've found this to be an excellent way to help me enhance my understanding of what I've been studying in a way I can't from an ordinary lecture-style class.

Alright, I've rambled on long enough. Things are going well, for the most part, although as I said there is a lot of work. And as is the curse of philosophy, the fact that I'm reading lots of books and learning lots of concepts doesn't mean that my own views are actually becoming better formed. If anything, I think I'll leave this semester more confused than ever before on what I think about philosophy, theistic belief, politics, etc. But at least I'll be more enlightened about my confusion, right? And perhaps I can take comfort in what Bertrand Russell once said about Wittgenstein: that he knew he was the brightest of all his pupils because he always looked the most puzzled during his lectures!

Allahu Akbar

2007-12-31T02:21:00.000-05:00

I see that in my last blog entry I promised to "do much posting when I return in December." That was silly of me. (I also see that I said that "The summer sure has flew by," but I never was one to quibble over grammar, after all.) Well, I am now back from Egypt. I would love to make many a blog post describing my experience if I had time; unfortunately I have no time. In two days I drive back down to the States with my brother, and on January 3 I fly out to London to begin my next adventure in Oxford, England. I've been at home for about two weeks, but they've been quite busy with connecting with friends and family, doing reading preparing for this upcoming semester (having already gotten a reading list from my tutor at Oxford for my Philosophy of Religion class), organizing and going through various important things, and of course celebrating the Christmas season and the birth of our Lord. Time for blogging, as always, is scarce. I will perhaps try to say a little something about my trip now, but I wouldn't even call it a chance to summarize it, because even that is quite impossible, and to do more is simply out of the question. But were I to say nothing about it I would feel quite guilty, having made all sorts of foolish promises about doing blogging in December, because then I would have time (ha ha).

Well, the semester was, in a word, amazing. In another word, it was enlightening. Educational. Fun. Stressful. Intense. Occasionally depressing. Sometimes hopeful. I learned some Arabic, and then promptly forgot most of it. I went on various weekend trips to all the tourist places in Egypt. I lived with a Muslim family in Egypt for a week ("homestays"), which was a very revealing experience. I took a course on Islam from an independent-minded and Sufi-influenced Muslim professor, and it was awesome. The other two courses in the program were focused primarily on the politics of the region, and I learned much about those, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict. In November we visited Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine for those two classes, and the time in the last was definitely every word that I used at the beginning of this paragraph, ten times over. Seeing the sites where our Lord walked is a very spiritually moving experience. In quite another way, seeing the conflict and violence and hatred that persists in the area today is also quite a spiritually moving experience. Jesus' way was radical back when he preached it, and it's radical now. And they didn't follow it back then, and we're not following it now.

I could, of course, write extensively about my opinions on various issues we studied and encountered on the trip. Perhaps I will, someday. I will offer the observation that I am becoming increasingly convinced that nationalism is the root of a great deal of evil. This is not what I would have said a few months ago, when I was becoming sympathetic to the idea that some limited patriotism is okay. Now, I'm not quite at the point where I'd say that all patriotism is evil, but good Lord, I look at all the wars and hatred it's brought about and I'm tempted to.

Some highlights of the trip:

All of the traveling, both in Egypt and the Middle East. Perhaps that's a cop out. Then, specifically, Dahab, a beach town on the Red Sea. The people are fun, the tourists aren't (usually) American, and the snorkeling is amazing. The Pyramids, of course. Istanbul: the Hagia Sophia and the city in general. Damascus, a wonderful city with incredibly kind people and lots of character. Floating in the Dead Sea. Visiting all of the places where Jesus walked, and taught, and died. Observing Shabbat at the Western Wall, and having Shabbat dinners with Orthodox Jews. Homestays with Egyptian families. Going to a mosque service. Learning about Islam, and Judaism, and Eastern Christianity. Talking with Muslims, and Jews, and Christians. Hearing educated and intelligent speakers on politics, religion, culture, and everything in between. Speaking enough Arabic that Egyptians I'm talking to don't try to switch to English because they know it better than I know Arabic.

And, of course, the other students. There were twenty-nine of us students from various Christian colleges across the United States, and the nature of the program was such that we all got very close. Indeed, while I went on this program to be in the Middle East, I could not now imagine it without the people that I grew to know and love while I was there.

I really don't know what else to say, because there is simply so much. Perhaps a couple of anecdotes.

One of the things that we studied in Egypt was, as I said, Islam. I could say much about what I learned about Islam, and whether or not I think it is inherently "violent" or "undemocratic" or what have you. But instead I will simply offer an observation that I made in Cairo. Now, as a general rule taxi drivers in Cairo will try to rip you off if you are white, on the bet that you're a rich tourist who doesn't know any better. I found something interesting, however, and that is that whenever my taxi driver either had a Qur'an on his dashboard or wore one of the long beards that marks a particularly observant Muslim, he almost always gave me a fair deal on taxi fare. I think that I had one taxi driver with a Qur'an on his dashboard try to rip me off (although that was during Ramadan, when everyone suddenly becomes religious, and there were more Qur'ans on dashboards that at other times). So, what should we make of Islam? Well, you can go out and research that and tell me what you think. What I know is that when I am taking a taxi I know the observant Muslims will give me a fair deal.

While we're talking about Islam, the following is one of my favorite stories that our Islam professor told us. Hopefully it should give an idea of her character and why I enjoyed her so much. She was visiting Saudi Arabi with her son. The law in Saudi Arabia is that all women must cover their arms and their head, but only Saudi women must cover their faces. She was with her son in a public place somewhere when a muhtasib, or religious policeman, came up to her and hit her with a stick, telling her to cover her face. She didn’t realize that Saudi Arabia had these religious police (because Egypt, of course, doesn't), and so she didn’t know who this man was. So, thinking this was just some man being disrespectful, she took the stick from him and hit him with it, reprimanding him! (Her son, of course, she found out afterwards, was horrified, afraid that they were going to get deported now or something and he would lose his job.) He took it back from her and told her that she was too young to not have her face covered, which prompted her to point to her (adult) son and ask how she could be too young and yet have a son of that age? This prompted the (Saudi) women around her to start laughing, and the muhtasib then left, not knowing what to do, I suppose. It was only after that her son told her who he was, and that they could have been kicked out of the country.

Well, that's all I've got for the time being. If you want to see pictures, go to my Facebook page (hopefully I'll get them all up before I leave). In a week I'll be at Oxford. There I'll be taking two tutorials, Philosophy of Religion and Theory of Politics, as well as an upper-level seminar in Philosophy and a general Humanities class that all the students on the program take. After that ends (mid-April), I hope to travel around Europe with some friends for a few weeks, hitting up Italy, Switzerland, and France (and maybe Monaco). We're also planning on going to Ireland while on my spring break at Oxford. And I'm sure we'll get up to Scotland at some point. Summer plans are not finalized at this point; we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll have time to blog at Oxford, but probably not. And while I would love to have another week to relax and process this last semester, I am excited for this upcoming one, and am sure that it will be a wonderful experience as well, albeit of a quite different kind.

The Middle East Studies Program

2007-08-11T23:33:00.000-04:00

Somehow, at the beginning of the summer I had all of these grand plans for things I wanted to blog about, and now suddenly the summer is almost over and I've only written a couple of them. I don't think I'm going to get a chance to do many more now, especially what with being so busy getting ready for Egypt now and all. However, I did feel that I ought to give y'all some sort of post on what I'll be doing in Egypt, at least as much as I know at this point.

On Tuesday, August 28, students from some 17 or so Christian colleges and universities across the United States will gather at JFK International Airport in New York, meeting the 28 other students with whom they will spend one of the most exciting semesters they are likely to experience in college. They will spend the flight getting to know their new friends and cementing relationships already formed through Facebook. On Wednesday they will arrive in Cairo, Egypt. After a week of orientation (during which they will learn "survival Arabic," how to find the way around the part of Cairo they're in, and the dos and don'ts of living in a conservative Muslim culture, among many other things), they will begin the courses that they are taking through the Middle East Studies Program. Beginning then and continuing throughout the whole semester, they will learn the Arabic language, which for most of them will be quite unlike any language they have previously studied. The other three classes are taught in consecutive block seminars. The first course is "Islamic Thought and Practice," the second "Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East," and the third "Conflict and Change in the Middle East Today."

The primary part of Peoples and Cultures is going to be taught while we are traveling. We are not spending our entire time in Egypt; throughout almost the whole month of November we'll be traveling to a number of different countries throughout the Middle East. Another part of that course is a week-long home stay with an Egyptian family, which I am assuming is happening at the end of October, before we start our traveling. The program will end in the second week of December, with the 29 students flying back to North America on December 13.

While we're in Egypt, we will have classes Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with Friday-Saturday being our weekend and Tuesday being the day we do service projects. School days begin with breakfast at 8:00, followed by devotionals at 8:45, Arabic from 9:30-11:00, course lectures and/or guest speakers from 11:15-1:00, lunch at 1:00, and "cultural activities" in the late afternoon (optional events which we will get more information about when we arrive). The weekends are our own, and the program organizes a few optional weekend excursions to select sites in Egypt, such as Alexandria, Luxor, and the Pyramids at Giza (although expenses involved are covered by the students).

Although breakfast and lunch are provided on school days, meals on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, as well as all dinners, are the responsibility of the students. We are given a food allowance for shopping, but have to do all of our own cooking. This in itself will be an adventure for many of us guys on the program, I am sure! I have been doing my best to learn to cook this summer, and have three dishes that I feel relatively confident in preparing, which I think ought to last me for the semester (especially if we students do some sort of plan wherein we each cook one day of the week or something, which I'm sure we will).

In addition to forcing me to learn to cook, the MESP has been keeping me busy this summer by giving me work to do before the program even starts. There are three books that we are supposed to read; I have read two, and should be able to finish the next one shortly. We are also supposed to learn the Arabic script. That's a tall order itself, but I've been making some good progress. I'm hoping to have that done by the time the program starts as well. (And it is largely my working on that that is sapping the free time that I would otherwise have to post on this blog!) And that of course is to say nothing of that random packing and shopping and other such preparations that I have to do. It's difficult to believe that in less than three weeks, I will be in Egypt! The summer sure has flew by. We will not have regular Internet access in Egypt--our main access will be through Internet cafes in Cairo--and so, I will not be updating my blog while there (and I will only be checking my E-mail sporadically). I may make another post or two this summer if I have time, but no promises. Be assured, however, that I will do much posting when I return in December!

The Admissions Office

2007-07-06T20:16:00.000-04:00

There, see? Only two days between my last post and this one! I'd say that's pretty good. Even if it probably won't continue. Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, I am working at the Messiah College Admissions Office this summer. There are a number of different jobs available on campus for students during the summer, and I considered myself fortunate to have gotten what I think is probably one of the better ones. It is definitely much better than my job last summer. Cleaning the floors at a poultry plant for a couple of months certainly puts things in perspective--having done a job like that, almost anything would seem better. On the other hand, I was glad to have done that job, if only because it gave me a great appreciation for those for whom such work is all they will ever know. I was miserable enough working there even though I had a stable home and a supportive family to come home to, not to mention the promise of it all being over in a couple of weeks. How single mothers who leave work and then spend the rest of the day taking care of their children, and possibly working a second job, do it, I can hardly even begin to imagine.

At any rate, my job this summer is rather different. As a work study, or "Office Assistant" (which I believe is my official title) at the Admissions Office, I--along with the seven other work studies in the office--have three primary responsibilities. The first, and most important, is to give campus tours to prospective students and (usually) their families. This is probably the most enjoyable and most rewarding part of my job. Giving more than two tours a day (they take about an hour each) can be pretty tiring, but we haven't been busy enough yet that that has often happened to me. Later in the summer it gets quite busy, I'm led to understand, so I might be giving that many then, though.

Our second responsibility is to telephone prospective students and ask them questions which we use to complete a computer survey, simultaneously answering any questions they have about Messiah College--"telecounseling," we call it. In small amounts this is not bad, but doing it for four hours every day--which we are supposed to when we can--gets tedious. Of course, we find ways to make it interesting--for instance, we have "bingo sheets" with boxes that we can cross off when we talk to certain kinds of students (e.g. "Student with your initials," or "Interested in study abroad," "Asked about chapel"). If we get five in a row then we get to take something (usually candy) from the prize box! Even with bingo, calling is probably the part of my job that I enjoy the least, simply because of the amount of it which I do. Of course, it doesn't help when you have a bad day and talk only to rude people, or people who are not at all interested in talking to you. However, that happens less often than one might think, especially from what I've heard about working as a telemarketer--the kinds of responses that one gets then. I'd say I usually get about one hang-up a day, and that the majority of the people that I call are friendly, and many are actually glad that we called them. So calling students can itself also be quite rewarding, especially when you talk to a particularly excited or engaging student.

Still, one does talk to some "interesting" people. Just the other day one of my other coworkers got yelled at for about 11 minutes by a mom who was telling her how "you can't sell Jesus." Another of my coworkers was told by a mom that her son had ruled out Messiah College because it wasn't a Christian college. (For some reason, that isn't one of our drop down options for why they ruled out Messiah. My coworker picked "Too Liberal.") And then there's the people who, when you ask to speak to whoever the student is whom you're calling, says "Just a minute," talks to that person loudly, and then picks the phone back up and says "I'm sorry, he's not here right now." If you're going to lie, at least don't make it so bloody obvious.

Thankfully, though, the rarity of such responses makes it possible to look at them with relatively good-natured humour. (Although this part of my job has led me to the conclusion that--like it or not--some people are just jerks.) Nevertheless, such responses definitely give me a sympathy for telemarketers (as my previous job gave me for factory workers). Now, I don't think of what we do as telemarketing per se, as I am not technically selling anything--we are, of course, trying to convince students to come to Messiah, but we are also gathering information about prospective students that is helpful to us, and if a student says they are not interested or does not want to talk to us, we do not push the issue. Moreover, unlike your average telemarketer (or so I imagine) I really do believe in the quality and importance of what I'm "selling." Still, I feel a certain affinity with telemarketers now. Certainly I still find them annoying, but it's important to remember that just because they happen to be disturbing you doesn't mean that they are enjoying it any more than you are. I imagine that most telemarketers are working said job because they can't get work elsewhere, and it goes without saying that it's a job that brings with it an inordinate amount of stress and frustration. At the very least, I know that from now on I will make a concerted effort to be polite when informing telemarketers that I am not interested in whatever they are selling--slamming down the phone without saying anything or getting angry is not only rude, it's not going to accomplish anything for either of you.

Anyway, that was a long rant that didn't really have much of a point. (I like those.) The third responsibility of work studies in the Office is to perform general office tasks--which could be anything from the relatively monotonous stuffing of envelopes to the relatively fun preparation of a scavenger hunt for a large student conference that will be on campus soon. This part of my job I also usually enjoy, mostly because it's pretty varied and so tends to not get too tedious. That's basically how I feel about my job overall--even with the 20 hours of calling per week that I do, there's enough variety to keep things interesting. And the fact that I really feel as if I'm doing valuable work--since I happen to really like Messiah College, and affirm the things that it stands for--helps a lot as well. And, of course, having great coworkers and supervisors makes the job that much more fun. Plus, doing this job has naturally helped me learn a lot about the college which I would never have known otherwise--things about some of the departments which I didn't know anything about before, snippets of school history (although I daresay a lot of my knowledge in that is superior to those of my colleagues, even though it's nowhere near the level of some of my family), and of course a better understanding of the "inner workings" of the college. All in all, it's a great summer job. I can hardly believe that I'm already halfway done--and in only seven weeks, it's off to Egypt I go!

John Howard Yoder

2007-07-04T22:41:00.000-04:00

Alright, so I managed to go over a month without blogging. I told you not to expect normal updates. Actually, I did have a couple of things I wanted to write about, but I have been busy with a summer school class (in addition to working full time). I just finished MATH 109, aka Calculus I Part I, which fulfills my general education math credit here at Messiah. I took it now (as a directed study) because trying to take two majors and a minor while studying abroad for a full year is not conducive to getting all your course requirements in during the school year. I also took a 1-credit Canoeing class for my third Phys. Ed. credit, which was much fun. I managed not to almost drown, too (thankfully, I do swim, and I wore a life jacket) when we went on the Yellow Breeches. In fact, I managed to never even tip--which is more than can be said for a couple of my classmates, especially when they tried canoe surfing when we were on the Susquehanna. As for Calculus, I just took my final exam, and think that I did well--I'm just glad to finally have a bit of free time this summer. In two and half weeks I'm flying back to Manitoba for a week. I'll be getting in late on Friday, July 20, and flying back to Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 29.

A few weeks ago my information packet for the Middle East Studies Program came in the mail, including three books that we are supposed to read this summer, as well as a booklet for learning the basic Arabic script, which we are also supposed to do before the semester starts. So much for free time. Between that, trying to work out things like shots and passport renewals for next semester, and preparing my application for Oxford the semester after that (as I'd rather not be working on that whilst in Egypt), I might as well be taking another summer class. Speaking of Egypt, I regret to inform you, my loyal readers, that I will not be able to update y'all on my adventures as much as I had previously suggested--if very much at all. As my information packet informed me, we won't have regular access to the Internet, mostly having to use Internet Cafes, and aren't going to have many opportunities to regularly E-mail friends and family (or update blogs, one assumes). What I do intend to do, however, is to keep a journal on my computer and, if nothing else, post installments about my adventures when I return in December. Other than that, no promises.

As for this summer, I do hope to write at least a couple more posts: probably one on the Euthyphro Dilemma, and certainly one talking a little bit about my job this summer, working at the Admissions Office here at Messiah. I thought of writing some thoughts about patriotism (it being the 4th of July and all), but decided that my dad has already covered that subject enough for the time being, and besides, I don't know that what I would write would be that much different from what he's written--if I was even sure exactly what I thought about patriotism. At some points I feel that it is a fundamentally good thing--that, although it is often taken too far in the United States, there's nothing wrong with reasonable pride in one's country. I likewise sometimes feel that for all its flaws, this (the United States) really is a good country. As Bill Clinton once said, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America." On the other hand, John Howard Yoder would no doubt point out that a political system that is by its very nature corrupt cannot be reformed from within--that true justice can only come from an outside source uncorrupted by human sin, i.e. Jesus and his political teachings. And there are times when I sympathize more with Yoder. So, in conclusion, I'm not really sure what I think of patriotism or the 4th of July or any of that. However, I think that that's a nice segue into a subject that I've wanted to write a post on for a while: John Howard Yoder and The Politics of Jesus.

For those of you not familiar with him, John Howard Yoder, was a (some might say the) Mennonite theologian, who wrote extensively on ethics and theology from an unapologetically Anabaptist perspective. Although he is probably best known for his continual defense of Christian pacifism, it is not hard, I think (although at times I might wish it were even easier), to find Christian intellectuals willing to defend pacifism. Jim Wallis and Walter Wink are the first to come to my mind. However, although those two bring very different theological viewpoints to the table, neither are Anabaptist, and it Yoder's Anabaptism, I think--not merely his pacifism--that makes him so unique. Peace is, of course, a very important aspect of Anabaptism, but so are things like the centrality of the Church and of community, the importance of a personal commitment to one's faith, and the Bible--and Jesus' teachings in particular--as the primary (some might even say sole) source of one's faith and practice. Yoder exemplifies these, and he is well worth reading for this reason--even if one does not always agree with him. The Politics of Jesus in particular is a book that I think more Christians ought to be required to read--although be warned, as it is certainly not light reading (and is probably best read in a manner unlike that in which I read it--namely, over two days (and nights) cramming for a final project).

But I am getting ahead of myself. I read The Politics of Jesus for a theology class I took this last spring. For my final project in the class, I chose to read Yoder's classic and write a report on it. I won't copy that report into here--it is far too long, and probably not interesting enough to warrant it--but I will say some of the same things that I said in it here. In a word, the book contends that, contrary to popular opinion, Jesus was not an apolitical Messiah sent only to serve as the atoning sacrifice for his sins, that, far from it, Jesus was a human being who taught not only personal ethics but also social and political ethics, and that if we truly wish to call ourselves his followers we must actively live those out. The first half of the book consists primarily of Yoder attempting to show, mostly through an examination of the book of Luke, that Jesus' teachings were explicitly political. In the second half of the book Yoder then presents his vision of what Jesus' politics were, exactly. Yoder definitely has many interesting ideas, some compelling, others less so, but all challenging. First and foremost he is worth reading because he presents a reading of Luke totally unlike what we are accustomed to--even me, growing up in a Mennonite church and an Anabaptist family. While some might find his exegesis to be unduly motivated by his pacifist theology, I found that many of his interpretations were much more original and intuitive, and made better sense of the text, than the ones we are typically presented with. For instance, Yoder consistently portrays a picture of a Jesus tempted by violence, the use of coercive force to overthrow the Romans and establish himself as king, as so many of his followers wanted him to--and Yoder allows us to see this theme in places we might not otherwise. The temptations in the desert being relating to this theme is obvious (Satan showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world), the suggestion that Judas betrayed Jesus in the hopes that he would force him to begin a violent revolution is less so. And yet, it gives Judas one of the more realistic motives for his betrayal that I've seen suggested. One of Yoder's more unusual claims is that Jesus' ministry is primarily based around the ushering in of the Jubilee Year, a la the Old Testament--that "the acceptable year of the Lord" referred to in Jesus' "inauguration speech" in Luke 4 was in fact the Jubilee Year, and that Jesus' teachings call for a continual and neverending Jubilee, not just a one-in-every-seven-years event but a complete new social and economic order, characterized by the cancellation of debts, the liberation of slaves, and the equitable redistribution of wealth. While I found this to be an interesting idea, I did think that to support it Yoder sometimes came up with interpretations that seemed strained. For instance, Yoder would see Matthew 5:40 ("And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well") as a command not to poor people unjustly sued by the rich, but to legitimate debtors who are hesitant to pay off their debts (as is necessary of Yoder's new economic order, in which all borrow and lend freely, is to be possible). But looking at the verse in context makes such an interpretation rather difficult--in just the previous verse, Jesus speaks of how we should act towards "the one who is evil"--hardly a legitimate creditor! And in the verse after (going the second mile), it is difficult to see who else could be forcing Jews to carry their packs except for Roman soldiers. Other suggestions of Yoder's I also remain skeptical of: for instance, his use of the Old Testament war texts to show that Jesus' audiences believed in a God who could and would fight for them (meaning that, in their minds, unlike many of ours, nonviolence could actually "work"), while interesting, fails to deal with the legitimate issues that modern readers bring to many of these rather barbaric texts.

Yoder's most controversial suggestion, and that for which he has probably received the most criticism, is his interpretation of the Haustafeln, or "household codes," found in the New Testament Epistles. Codes calling for wives to submit to their husbands, slaves to their masters, etc., have often been a point of embarrassment for more liberal Christians. Yoder takes a view quite different than, for instance, Walter Wink (who views most of these codes as a perversion of Jesus' radically egalitarian teachings), one that preserves a conservative understanding of the legitimacy of Scripture without promoting (or attempting not to promote) the kinds of evils that these passages have all too often been used to promote, such as racism and sexism. According to Yoder, one of the primary ways in which we as Christians are called to imitate Christ (a key theme of Yoder's thought) is through "revolutionary subordination." He notes that the very fact that these rules were put in place suggests that new Christians felt in some sense liberated from their subjugated place in society. But because of Christ they were called not to violently force that liberation upon society, but to voluntarily submit themselves as a witness to the world, as Jesus did. Radical for their time, the Haustafeln address powerless parties as moral agents--their subservience is no longer simply the natural order of things, but a moral, conscience choice to imitate Christ. Moreover, these codes do not just call for the subordination of the weak to the strong, but for the converse as well--the subordination of the strong to the weak--"mutual subordination," if you will.

On the one hand, I am attracted to Yoder's exegesis of these passages. Too often liberals simply pass these passages off as manifestations of a patriarchal culture which have nothing to say to us today. Yoder points to several positive aspects of them which would not be immediately obvious otherwise. On the other hand, while it is true that progressive Christians today may be too focused on liberation--an ideal of our prevailing liberal culture--and not on the imitation of Christ (and his suffering), it is also true that the embrace of suffering for sufferings' sake (or even, ostensibly, for Christ's sake) is a very dangerous thing. Moreover, there are some passages which it is difficult not to find some fault with. What are we to do with 1 Cor. 11:14-15, in which Paul (or whoever actually wrote the text) insists that "nature itself" teaches us that it is degrading for men to have long hair or women to uncover their head? This is the very definition of social conservatism, whether Yoder admits it or not. Yoder decries the reading of modern values into Scripture: “How can there by any corrective or challenge to our self-sufficiency, any continuity in the Christian community…if the present insight of the bearer is to be sovereign judge of any communication one will accept?” (pg. 174-75) My concern is that when Scripture is taken as the ultimate (indeed, the only) norm, if there is anything in the Biblical canon that is unjust or oppressive, it can never be done away with. The very possibility of questioning anything in Scripture is rejected from the outset. I do not want to outright discount Yoder’s concept of revolutionary subordination, but I am unwilling to take it as far as he does. As with the Old Testament war narratives, I am unwilling to completely disregard my “modern sensibilities.”

I have highlighted, perhaps inevitably, those ideas of Yoder with which I disagreed, or at least took issue. I could write extensively, however, on how much I liked his exegesis of Romans 13, or Revelation, or the philosophy of history he presents in his last chapter, one not obsessed with understanding and directing the flow of history through violent means (so that that which is good is ultimately that which is "effective") but one that renounces the claim to govern history, that proclaims the victory of the weak and the lowly--"The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power"--and that proclaims the good of a life of servanthood not out of a concern to shape history, but out of loyalty to the life, death, and person of Jesus Christ. But I will content myself to close with a quote of Yoder's:

Jesus was not just a moralist whose teachings had some political implications; he was not primarily a teacher of spirituality whose public ministry unfortunately was seen in a political light; he was not just a sacrificial lamb preparing for his immolation, or a God-Man whose divine status calls us to disregard his humanity. Jesus was, in his divinely mandated (i.e. promised, anointed, messianic) prophethood, priesthood, and kingship, the bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships…No slicing can avoid his call to an ethic marked by the cross, a cross identified as the punishment of a man who threatens society by creating a new kind of community leading a radically new kind of life.

May God grant me the wisdom and the strength to live out this ethic.

Equality Ride

2007-05-28T19:26:00.000-04:00

On Friday, April 13, Equality Ride visited Messiah College to challenge its stance on homosexuality. The Equality Riders are members of Soulforce, a group that advocates rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. On the Ride, they travel across the country and visit colleges which they feel have discriminatory or oppressive policies towards homosexuals, challenging them to change these policies. Unlike the administrations of many other schools, the Messiah administration welcomed the Riders onto the campus and was willing to dialogue with them. The day Equality Ride came, however, we also were visited by Repent America, a radical right-wing Christian organization dedicated to opposing such evils as homosexuality, abortion, and evolution. The members of Repent America stood on campus and picketed Equality Ride's visit, handed out hate literature (I really can't categorize it as anything else), and told any students who cared to listen why all homosexuals are going to hell (and why the students probably were too--my roommate was told that he was), why Messiah College wasn't really a Christian college, and other such cheerful things. Ironically enough, my perception is that Repent America hurt their cause more than they helped it. Many more conservative students at Messiah weren't so thrilled about Equality Ride's visit, but after seeing the members of Repent America behave so hatefully and irrationally began to feel much more sympathy for the Equality Riders. Indeed, I felt very sorry for not only them but all LGBT Christians who have to face such hate speech on a regular basis.

Anyway, the post that follows, loosely based off of an opinion piece I wrote for a sociology class this last semester, is less about my own views on homosexuality and more on how to positively promote dialogue, what I think both sides of the current debate need to keep in mind when expressing their views.

I will start by addressing my conservative brothers and sisters, who feel that homosexual intercourse is a sin. (I use the words conservative and liberal for convenience, to mean holding to a belief that homosexual intercourse/marriage is or is not sinful.) Firstly, I would say that it is possible to affirm homosexuality, or even be gay, and be a Christian. This does not mean that homosexuality is right, but it does mean that someone can hold to beliefs that you disagree with (and that may, indeed, be wrong) and still be a brother or sister in Christ. If God were going to condemn us for all of our false beliefs and sinful behaviors that we do not recognize as such, none of us would have a very good chance of making it into heaven.

Secondly, I would ask that you be aware of your own ignorance. Unless you have studied this issue thoroughly, it is quite unlikely you know more about it than the LGBT whom you are trying to persuade to your position. Odds are that any objection that you might raise to a LGBT Christian’s beliefs and/or lifestyle, he or she has heard before. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you should not ask LGBT Christians honest questions or even explain to them, respectfully, why you disagree with them, but it does mean a realization that you likely aren’t going to hit them with an earth-shattering argument that they have never heard before.

Thirdly, and similarly, recognize the legitimate feelings and emotions of LGBT Christians, and how unaware of those you probably are. I believe that it is possible to love the sinner and hate the sin. Far too often, however, this is simply a euphemism for hating the sinner. Loving the sinner should come first, and in this case that rarely really happens. LGBT Christians have good reason to feel oppressed and threatened. Many have faced hatred and intolerance that we heterosexuals can scarcely even begin to imagine. Some have grown up their entire life being told, by their family and friends, that an orientation they have no control over is wrong and sinful. The people who told them these things often didn’t know the first thing about homosexuality as a biological condition, and had no idea what they were actually going through. Repent

America

’s hate-filled rhetoric is evidence of the kind of bigotry and oppression LGBTs face all the time.

Now, it is true, you may not be that extreme, but what you say to your LGBT brothers and sisters may be more hurtful than you realize. When the Equality Riders came to Messiah a panel was held with two of the Riders and a student and professor representing Messiah. In the panel, one of the Riders, a lesbian, observed that the last thing a LGBT who comes out to one of his or her friends needs to hear is “I love you, but…” This is very true. Keeping in mind the suffering that so many LGBTs face, it is impertinent to make one’s primary focus in interacting with them changing them or their viewpoints. I, after all, am a pacifist, but I do not make it my personal mission to go around and dissuade anyone who is so inclines from joining the military. If I know them well, and they ask me, I will certainly tell them my opinion on the matter. But that does not mean that, if I were to meet a soldier who had just returned from serving in Iraq, and who truly believed what we are doing there, my first words to him would be, “I love you, but…” What if he saw his best friend die in the war? What if a LGBT whom you “love, but…” was ostracized from her family because of her sexuality?

I will now address those more liberal Christians who feel that homosexuality is not a sin. Firstly, I would ask (and this advice, again, could apply to conservatives as well in regards to liberals) that you actually listen to what the other side has to say. Do not assume that you know precisely why someone opposes homosexuality and why that reason is wrong. When dialoguing about this issue, both sides are often more interested in showing the other party up, explaining to them why they are wrong, than in actually listening to what they have to say.

Secondly, I would decry the comparison between racism and moral opposition to homosexuality, as in the analogy of the Equality Ride to the Freedom Rides of the 1960s. I wholeheartedly applaud Equality Ride’s use of nonviolent tactics, but I simply do not feel that the situation we are facing now is analogous to that we faced in the 60s. Sexual orientation is not the same thing as skin color, and acting on that orientation is certainly not the same thing as skin color. As critical as I am of many conservative attitudes towards homosexuality, I nevertheless hold that it is possible to love the sinner and hate the sin, that there is a difference between orientation and action. There is a widespread temptation to abuse historical figures and use them to support one’s cause. While I recognize the suffering that LGBTs face (and acknowledge that I probably do not fully understand the scope of it), implying that all who believe homosexual acts sinful are no different than racists is not a tactic I find particularly helpful. A Christian who feels that homosexual acts are wrong does not necessarily hate you as a person. To make “hate me or accept my lifestyle” the only two options is to polarize the issue further, and likely drive more conservatives towards the former than persuade them to the latter. Similarly, while emotional appeals are important and necessary, at some point one needs to go beyond that and rational discourse needs to begin as to why conservatives ought to change their stance on homosexuality (or Messiah College its policy).

Thirdly, I would ask that you recognize the genuine feelings and concerns that conservatives bring to this issue. Traditional morality is very important for many people. Homosexual marriage threatens this sense of traditional morality. You may scoff at this, but you should at least be sensitive to it. Many liberals take joy in demolishing conservative’s beliefs. And yet even if one disagrees with them, that is no justification for delighting in tearing them down.

Finally, I would suggest that there are valid justifications for believing homosexual intercourse/marriage to be a sin. There are reasons that (I think) are quite invalid, yes, but there are reasonable Biblical arguments against homosexuality that do not require a literal reading of Scripture or a schizophrenic view of Leviticus. The common one invoked by this school is to look at Jesus’ teaching on divorce, and apply the principles behind it to larger issues of marriage. One can challenge that approach, to be sure, but it is difficult to characterize it as a wholly unreasonable one. Messiah’s policy on homosexuality is quite obviously not simply an extension of an entrenched fundamentalist set of doctrines.

On that note, I would like to make a criticism, specific to Messiah College, of both sides on this issue (and in so doing likely betray my own opinion on this issue). In a theology class, I took this last semester, as we were talking about Equality Ride’s visit, a student commented that, as far as he’s concerned, the only reason Messiah hasn’t changed its policy on gay students is because then this school would be “off the radar” for conservative Christians. In other words, Messiah’s policy is purely political; it does not reflect a genuine belief on this issue. Well, I rolled my eyes at this and assumed it another instance of the typical stereotyping of this school as unabashedly “liberal” by conservative students. But then, the very next day, I saw a comment on Facebook, by a liberal member of a pro-LGBT group, saying that she was fairly certain that Kim Phipps wanted to change Messiah’s policy on homosexuality, but knows that she can’t because she’ll lose the support of more conservative donors to the college. So, it appears that both liberals and conservatives are convinced that this school doesn’t really oppose homosexuality, but is merely pretending to do so for political reasons. I would make the humble suggestion that maybe, just maybe, the administration of this school in fact is genuine in its policy, and that it is not inconsistent to be “liberal” on some issues but “conservative” on this one! Both sides on this issue (and in the larger culture wars) need to learn to avoid stereotyping the other, and that includes making assumptions about what certain parties believe based on one’s assessment of their other beliefs. Many of the above points are made in response to the stereotyping that plagues this issue. If you believe that homosexuality is sinful, you must be a fundamentalist Biblical literalist who has never actually known a gay person, as well as a pro-war Republican. If you believe that it is not, you must be a liberal Christian (if you're even allowed to be a Christian at all) who rejects all traditional Christian dogma, and a pro-abortion Democrat. These associations are clearly ridiculous, but I am astonished by how often they are nevertheless assumed. As I said above, polarizing the issue so that there are only two options makes it much more difficult for either side to actually listen to the other.

The larger point I am trying to illustrate is the need for respect, tolerance, and acknowledgment of other parties’ points of view. For this college to change its stance on homosexuality would involve it moving away from the traditional values of its heritage. Perhaps you think it should do that. But that is nevertheless not an easy process, and not one to rejoice in at any rate, if it is necessary. Homosexuality is a very polarizing issue in the Church today, and both sides have legitimate grievances and positions. Many LGBT Christians have suffered tremendously for their orientation and their beliefs, and understandably desire equality; many conservative Christians resent being told that they cannot hold to their traditional belief on this issue even if they otherwise exhibit love and tolerance towards gays. Both sides need to work to understand and sympathize with the other, not stereotyping them but actually listening to what they have to say, taking to heart their genuine concerns and emotions. And in the end, as brothers and sisters in Christ, we should remember that that which binds us together is far stronger than that which pulls us apart.

Intelligent Design

2007-05-18T18:04:00.000-04:00

This final essay was written, coincidentally enough, for my third and final exam. This one we got to type up, rather than write out by hand, in an exam session twice as long as the earlier ones. As such, this essay goes on for a while. I've edited it a little bit (and wikified it) to change some stuff that I wasn't too happy about it in what I handed in, and to make it (hopefully) a little more readable. I imagine this essay will be the most interesting (it was for me), not least because in it I actually put forth my own views rather extensively.

Intelligent Design (ID) is notoriously hard to define. Essentially, it is an argument that design exists in nature, and that we can detect it. Its supporters and detractors disagree vehemently, not only on whether it is true, but on whether or not it constitutes science. To most of ID’s supporters, it is a valid scientific hypothesis that provides a viable alternative to a naturalistic evolutionary account of life’s origin. To its harshest detractors, it is nothing but “creationism in a cheap tuxedo.” In my view, neither of these definitions is true, even if they both contain elements of truth.

ID is not creationism, although it certainly resembles it at points. Like creationism, it tends to be vocally opposed to evolution, not only as a scientific theory, but also as a social force. Moreover, it arguably has some roots in creationism. In Dover, PA, at a trial over the teaching of evolution in the public school system, Judge Jones ruled that ID was the “progeny” of creationism. In his case, one can certainly see how he drew that conclusion. One of the strongest arguments against ID in that case was that the textbook ID advocates supported, Of Pandas and People, had replaced almost all references to creationism in earlier editions with references to intelligent design, often changing little or nothing else except for those two terms. Despite all this, ID has many differences from creationism. Some ID proponents used to be, or even still are, creationists, but as Angus Menuge has observed, others were theistic evolutionists before migrating to the ID camp. Moreover, unlike creationism, ID does not use the Bible to support its claims, it does not take a stand on the age of the earth, and it does not deny the Big Bang. It does not even necessarily, in all its forms, deny evolution, although the vast majority of its supporters do. Of course, nearly all ID proponents are theists, usually conservative Christians, and this has led some to suggest that their scientific motives are less than pure. But while the effect of one’s religious beliefs on one’s science is debatable, it should be clear that to simply call ID proponents creationists is not accurate.

The most popular argument for ID is almost certainly irreducible complexity. Its most vocal proponent is biochemist Michael Behe. Behe contends that certain biological systems need all of their parts, working together, in order to function; take one away, and the system no longer works. Since an irreducibly complex system needs all of its parts in order to function, if it is missing one, it serves no biological purpose. As such, it has no reason to be “chosen” by natural selection as favorable in the struggle for life. One might object that it could have arisen purely by chance, but Behe says that the odds of this are so overwhelmingly low that we might as well not even consider it. (William Dembski has made a more sophisticated form of this argument, purporting to be able to mathematically show that certain systems could not have arisen by chance, because for them to do so would have been so incredibly improbable.) The “poster child” of irreducible complexity is the bacterial flagellum. According to Behe, the flagellum “can be thought of as an outdoor motor that bacteria use to swim” (Debating Design, 353). The flagellum supposedly needs all of its parts, working in tandem, to function; take one part away and it works no better than an ordinary outdoor motor missing a part. So, says Behe, we can conclude that the bacterial flagellum could not reasonably have come about through purely naturalistic evolutionary means. It must have been designed.

Naturally, many scientists dispute the claim of irreducible complexity. Kenneth Miller is one of Behe’s strongest critics. He denies that the bacterial flagellum, or any other system, can be shown to be irreducibly complex. He observes that the flagellum bears a number of similarities to the type III secretory system (TTSS), a protein system present in some bacteria. Miller says that the TTSS could conceivably have been co-opted by natural selection and be converted into the flagellum (or possibly an intermediary structure). How exactly this co-option might have worked, we don’t know, but Miller contends that all that is necessary to disprove irreducible complexity is to show that in principle, a structure could have evolved. We do not know exactly how the flagellum evolved, although we hopefully will one day; for now, however, all that is necessary is to show that it could have evolved. Behe, as one would expect, has his own counterclaims on this issue, but at this point the debate gets so saturated with incomprehensible scientific language that it becomes very difficult for laypersons to follow, so I will not pursue Behe or Miller’s arguments further.

The question is, of course, whether ID is merely rhetoric couched in incomprehensible scientific language, or if it is, in fact, science couched in incomprehensible scientific language. My scientific illiteracy aside, this is a key issue, determining as it does whether ID can be taught in public schools. Nor is it easily answered, because the boundaries of science have rarely been clearly defined, and scientists (and philosophers of science) differ on what precisely constitutes science. Most scientists and philosophers reject the categorization of ID as science, but of course, this does not necessarily mean that it is not science, or that it is not true. Much of the debate centers on the reigning scientific convention of methodological naturalism, in which the possibility of supernatural explanations for events is ruled out a priori, at least as far as science as concerned. ID supporters find this patently unfair, and as much a matter of faith as theism. If a racist detective ruled out a priori the possibility of a white person having committed a murder, we would not call that a fair investigation, would we? Naturally, many scientists and philosophers dispute this analogy. Robert Pennock observes that methodological naturalism is not a core doctrine of science, or something simply taken on faith, but rather a convention that has taken hold for one simple reason: it works. It is possible that it may cease to work some day, and be unable to explain something. Until that happens, however, we have no reason to throw it out.

Showing that methodological naturalism has ceased to work in a certain case is, of course, precisely what advocates of ID are trying to do. In my own view, could they successfully do this, they might be able to call ID science. Have they succeeded in doing this? As we have seen, Behe and Miller disagree sharply as to whether irreducible complexity proves that unguided evolution could not have occurred. I am too ignorant of biochemistry to make a definitive judgment on this, although I find Miller’s arguments more persuasive. But a key issue, I think, is that if naturalistic processes cannot explain something, what can? ID is quite intentional about not saying precisely who or what the designer is. Most of its supporters, of course, believe the designer to be the Christian God. This has led many to be skeptical of ID’s purported objectivity in regards to the designer. (They believe, if you will, that the personal beliefs of ID theorists suggest that this “objectivity” is intelligently designed.) ID proponents argue that one’s religion does not determine whether or not one’s science is good. While this is assuredly the case, there are a number of problems, quite aside from allegations of bias, involved in not specifying the designer. Pennock makes a number of scathing critiques of ID along these lines. He says that ID supporters, if they truly wish to have a scientific theory, must provide some alternative theory to evolution by natural selection. It is not enough merely to argue against evolution; one must offer an alternative account of life’s origins. And to simply say that organisms were designed does not do this: one must give an account of how, where, and when this design occurred. If certain species were specially created by God, ID must be able to tell us when and where this happened, and how exactly this special creation works. If it does not, it has not provided a scientific alternative to evolution. As Thomas Kuhn observed in his seminal The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, scientists will not toss out a paradigm until a better one can be offered to replace it.

Although describing the exact processes by which design occurred is problematic no matter who you believe the designer to be, one could at least venture a hypothesis as to when and where design occurred if one assumes some sort of theism. This is what young-earth creationism does, and this is why, unlike ID, YEC actually offers an alternative (albeit a poor one) to evolution. ID proponents are quite adamant, however, about not bringing Christianity, or the Bible, into the conversation. Still, for the moment let us look at what happens if we do actually acknowledge the elephant in the room. Does ID do any better if we assume the designer to be God? According to both Pennock and prominent philosopher Elliot Sober, it does not. William Dembski argues for ID by analogy: other sciences, such as cryptology, assume design as a possibility, so why can’t biology? The difficulty with this is that we know, in the case of cryptology, how a possible designer of a code thinks, more or less. But while we have a reasonable idea of what human design looks like, we have no idea what supernatural design looks like. Sober puts it this way. When we see a watch, we infer that it was designed because we have a good idea of the sorts of goals and abilities that its (human) designer likely had. In this case, it is more likely, given a human designer, that this watch would have come about than it would be, given random chance. But in the case of, for instance, the flagellum, we have no idea of the goals and abilities of the designer, or even what or who the designer really is. We have no independent evidence that would suggest that God would have made the flagellum in its actual exact form, whereas with the watch we do have independent evidence to suggest that a human would have made it in something like the form it is in. In this case, we have no reasonable reason to say that it is more likely, given God, that the flagellum would have come out as it did than it is that it would have come out as it did, given no God.

Although ID is best known for its arguments having to do with biological life (likely because of the politics of the matter—anything in ID not antievolutionary in nature is less interesting to the American public), it has another, quite different set of arguments. These focus not on organisms, but on the universe itself; not on biology, but on physics. The fine-tuning argument for design essentially says that the physical constants of the universe show evidence of having been “finely tuned” for life. That is to say, had they been any different, life could never have come about. If the nuclear forces were any stronger or weaker, carbon, the basis of life as we know it, could not develop, or if it could it would not remain stable for long enough to bring about life. If the forces of gravity and electromagnetism had been slightly different, stars would either burn out too fast or be too weak for life to develop on their own satellites. Examples like this could be multiplied; suffice to say that most scientists and philosophers do not dispute that the universe at least bears the appearance of design. This has led to what is known as the Anthropic Principle, a principle recognizing the importance of basic laws in the formation of carbon-based life.

The question, of course, is whether the appearance of design is a good reason to, in fact, infer design, or if it is simply our own bias making us see evidence of design in the cosmos. Sober notes that the argument from fine tuning fails to take into account an underlying assumption of our observing fine tuning: that we exist. Since we exist, the universe must have the right constants, regardless of whether it was designed or not. If the constants were not right, we would not be around to observe this fact. Put another way, the probability of the constants being right is 1, whether the universe was random and we exist, or the universe was designed and we exist. This argument against fine-tuning is known as the Weak Anthropic Principle. Many find the Weak Anthropic Principle ridiculous, offering the following analogy in response to it. A prisoner who is about to be executed is shot at by twelve expert marksmen. They all miss, and he says that this requires no explanation, because if they had not missed, he would not be around to observe it. In this case, opponents of Sober’s argument say, it would clearly be more reasonable for him to infer that the marksmen must have intentionally missed him. In the same way, it would be reasonable to infer that the universe was designed. Sober responds to this point by making a detailed argument based on the difference between probability and likelihood, but as with irreducible complexity, this is the point at which the debate becomes incomprehensible for laypersons, at least those of us who lack a detailed understanding of probability theory.

There is another response to the fine-tuning argument, however, that is easier to grasp and also more common among scientists. That is the multiverse hypothesis. The multiverse hypothesis suggests that our universe is only one of many, and with so many universes one would have to have the basic laws that we observe; that one just happens to be ours. John Polkinghorne responds to this hypothesis by saying that it is just as metaphysical as theism, and does not have as much explanatory power as theism, which also accounts for such things as the existence of beauty and moral standards, personal experiences with the transcendent, and the fact that we can understand the world at all. But lest we think we have at last found a clinching argument for ID (and we have not even considered other objections to the fine-tuning argument, such as the possibility of a “theory of everything” or its alleged anthropomorphic bias), we are reminded that Polkinghorne—who is not an ID proponent—has gone beyond science in defending theism as superior to the multiverse hypothesis. The arguments for theism outlined above are clearly philosophical, or speculative, and not scientific, in nature. As far as science qua science is concerned, theism and the multiverse hypothesis have equal explanatory power. And, of course, if one holds to methodological naturalism, neither of them are scientific hypotheses at all.

As we have seen, there are a number of problems with ID’s claims. Irreducible complexity is an uncertain tenet at best; we have no reason to get rid of methodological naturalism; ID fails to offer a satisfying alternative to evolution; the fine-tuning argument cannot be defended without going well beyond science. For these reasons and more, I am inclined to reject ID, and opt rather for what is known as theistic evolution (TE). There are a number of different forms of TE, all of which have in common that they accept the truth of evolution and seek to adapt their theology to it. Some of them, in my view, go too far in seeking to accommodate religion to science, as if the latter was the only kind of truth there is (incidentally, I feel ID does the same thing). But I do not deny that science has implications for theology, and it is these implications, as suggested by Polkinghorne, that I would like to now look at.

According to Polkinghorne (and other theistic evolutionists), the truth of evolution makes it more difficult to believe in a God who is personally responsible for every action of the universe. Evolution via natural selection is a process full of randomness and suffering, hardly something we associate with the all-good, all-powerful God of classical theism. (Evolution is, of course, hardly the only thing that makes it difficult to believe in this kind of a God. The problem of evil exists quite apart from theories of origins.) As such, its truth ought to lead us to postulate a God who is not responsible for every act in his creation, preferring to order the whole rather than control the parts. One prominent interpretation (although not the only one) of contemporary quantum physics is that quantum events are indeterminate, uncaused. This could lead, ultimately, to an indeterminate universe. Polkinghorne suggests that there is an element of chance, or contingency, in the universe, and that God has granted this to the universe so that it may be allowed to in some sense “make itself” (Debating Design, 256). God has created something other than himself, and this other is not completely controlled by him. As such, God is not directly responsible for the various events in nature—although he is responsible for ordering nature as a whole. The free will defense against the problem of evil is well known. It essentially says that evil exists because humans have free will, and sometimes choose to do evil. Polkinghorne adds to this the “free process” defense, which offers a possible solution to the more general problem of suffering: cruelty apparently inherent in nature (especially if one believes in evolution, although again getting rid of evolution does not get rid of the problem). Just as the good of free will in human beings cannot exist without evil, it may well be that the good of freedom in our universe cannot exist without suffering. All this is not to say that God cannot act in the universe (or in human beings): it is merely saying that he is not directly responsible for every act of nature.

I find this account of origins appealing because it accepts scientific truth but retains a relatively orthodox theology. I also think that it is more satisfying than ID, not only scientifically, but theologically as well. What kind of God does ID really lead us to? If we reject evolution wholesale, we are left with a God who is directly responsible for all of the various cruelties in nature (sometimes called “unintelligent design”). If we allow for a good deal of evolution but insist that certain systems, such as the bacterial flagellum, were directly created by God, what sort of implications does that have? To quote Pennock: “Are we to assume that God likes flagella?” (Debating Design, 143). Are we to believe in a God who provides us with scientific proof of his existence via little rotary motors in our cells? How is this any more theologically satisfying than theistic evolution?

At this point, a clarifier on TE is in order. TE is not opposed to the existence of design in the universe (as we have seen, Polkinghorne is a strong proponent of fine-tuning). It merely says that this design does not constitute proof, or science. In my own view, the biological arguments ID makes are unpersuasive, whereas its cosmic design arguments are more appealing, although they too are not knock down proof of God. The fine-tuning argument, in its ID form, does—for all of its explanatory power—suffer from the problem Sober and Pennock identified earlier, namely, that it does not give us any reason to think that it is likely that God would have created the universe in the way he supposedly did, as we can know nothing for certain about God. But while this argument shows that the fine-tuning argument cannot prove the existence of a God, it says nothing about whether it can offer Christians with deep-held beliefs support for their beliefs in the cosmos. It is true that if we assume theism that we are no better off than if we refuse to talk about the designer. But, if we assume Christianity, we are in a better position (although we are obviously well beyond science), I think. As Christians we affirm a belief in a God who desires a personal relationship with his creation. We believe that we are, in some way, created in God’s image. Assuming this kind of a God, fine-tuning is exactly what we would expect to find in the universe. This is not proof of Christianity, and Christianity does not stand or fall with the fine-tuning argument. But I see no reason why we as Christians cannot, for the time being, find support for our beliefs in nature.

The Origins Debate

2007-05-18T17:20:00.000-04:00

This next essay was prepared for my second exam in the class, in which I was asked to compare three of the following four positions: young-earth creationism, scientific atheism, theistic evolution, and Intelligent Design (I chose the first three). I hope that this essay will provide a good summary of these three positions, as well as their dangers and potential flaws. I could go on about the problems with young-earth creationism especially, but will prefer instead to limit my most pointed criticisms to Intelligent Design (in my next post)--most of which apply to YEC besides. Suffice to say that I find YEC both bad science and bad theology--the evidence for evolution is strong, and for an old earth even stronger, and a literalistic interpretation of the Bible brings with it its own set of dangers which I will not address in these posts. It is also worth mentioning, since I don't think any of these essays do, that there are more positions than the four dealt with in this and the next. For example, there is old-earth creationism, which alternately interprets the days in Genesis as ages, places a "gap" between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 in which the fossils formed (interpreting 1:2 as "Now the earth became formless and empty"), or rejects a chronological reading of Genesis 1 altogether (but still holding to special creation). There is even, on the extreme end of the "Biblical literalist" camp, geocentrism, which rejects almost all modern physics, chemistry, and biology because of Biblical texts which seem to suggest that the sun revolves around the earth. One can go even further than that and embrace the cosmology of the ancient Hebrews, in which the earth is flat, but so few embrace that view today that it is scarcely even worth mentioning, except perhaps as an illustration of how extreme a model of science and religion in which the latter trumps the former can go.

An integral part of any culture is its creation myths: its beliefs about its origins and the origins of humanity, life, and the universe. Contemporary American culture is divided on the origins issue. Ever since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, competing creation stories have fought for ascendancy. Some are explicitly religious, some explicitly scientific, while others try to be both. The three positions which I am going to examine in this essay are young-earth creationism, scientific atheism, and theistic evolution.

Young-earth creationism, also called scientific creationism, teaches that the universe and everything in it were created by the Christian God approximately six thousand years ago, and that human beings were created by a special direct act of creation. It relies on a literalistic interpretation of the Bible. It assumes that the Bible is inerrant, the direct word-for-word revelation of God, and intended to teach history and science. As such, young-earth creationists believe in six literal days in which God created “the heavens and the earth,” a literal Fall, and a global flood, all as recounted in Genesis. They claim that the flood is the cause of many of the earth’s geological features. Scientific creationism assumes that scientific evidence—when rightly interpreted—supports a literal reading of the Bible. This relies on a specific understanding of science as “[t]he systematic observation and correlation of present physical relationships and natural processes involving the properties of matter, the forces of nature and the phenomena of life” (Giberson & Yerxa, 86). What is important in this definition is that it does not allow science per se to develop theories on origins (or other historical matters); such theories go beyond the creationist definition of science. Therefore, creationism and evolution can be said to be on equal ground, for belief in both requires faith.

The scientific community overwhelmingly rejects the creationist definition of science, and views creationism as pseudoscience. Indeed, many of young-earth creationism’s claims are difficult to swallow if one does not subscribe to the creationists’ worldview. To give a single example, the claim by creationists that God created the universe “fully formed” so as to account for undeniable appearance of age in the universe (the fact that we are receiving light from stars more than 6000 light years from the earth, for instance) does not hold up well to such principles as Occam’s razor. In addition, many theologians object to young-earth creationism because it assumes a literal reading of the Bible. They claim that the purpose of the first creation myth in Genesis, for instance, was not to give a scientific or historical account of the beginnings of the universe, but to denounce polytheism and promote the monotheistic worship of YHWH.

The second position is the polar opposite of young-earth creationism. Scientific atheism, held by members of what Giberson & Yerxa call “the Council of Despair,” holds that science is true, and religion is not. Scientific atheists believe in the generally accepted scientific account of origins: the big bang occurred billions of years ago, followed by the development of stars and planets, the natural formation and subsequent evolution of life on earth, and finally the evolution of human beings and the development of the modern human personality. Scientific atheists have a reductionist view of science; that is, they believe that everything can be explained in purely naturalistic terms, for all truths are scientific truths. As such, any claim that cannot be scientifically tested (e.g. the existence of God) must be thrown out.

The difficulties associated with scientific atheism are largely associated with how much it tries to explain, the breadth of its claims. Scientific critics of the position do not take issue so much with its beliefs on origins as its insistence that because the big bang, evolution, etc. happened there must have been no purpose to them. Theologians who oppose young-earth creationism might claim that just as the Bible was not meant to teach science, neither can science prove or disprove theology. Finally, the vehemence with which scientific atheists attack religion likely serves to harden creationists against mainstream scientific claims on origins more than anything else.

Theistic evolutionists are theists who want to retain belief in religion while accepting the general claims of science. Although there is no formal belief in any particular scientific theory amongst theistic evolutionists, most would agree with the basic scientific creation story outlined above. They reject literal creation days, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. They do not believe, however, that science disproves religion; indeed, many believe that the natural world can provide evidence for (if not necessarily prove) the existence of God. Giberson & Yerxa outline three ways in which theistic evolutionists reconcile theism and evolution. The first is to say that God controls events that appear to be random (e.g. natural selection). The second, and similar, theory is that God designed a system of law and chance and let it run its course. The third idea is that God influences events without controlling them. This third is known as process theism, and has become popular not only because it is a more “scientific” theology, but also because it seems to provide a good solution to the problem of evil: God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and so he is not necessarily the author of evil.

Theistic evolution, of course, faces its own problems. The most obvious of these is that it is much more ambiguous than the opposing positions. While young-earth creationism and scientific atheism are clear-cut and consistent worldviews (whether or not they are philosophically defensible), theistic evolution is vague and undefined, trying to straddle as it is two opposing paradigms for understanding the world: religion and science. Where exactly to draw the line between science and religion is unclear. Moreover, in trying to accommodate religion to science, theistic evolution runs the risk of coming up with a God that is very different from the God of the Bible and the God of most ordinary Christians.

Evolution

2007-05-18T17:19:00.000-04:00

We spent a large part of the course looking at the theory of evolution, as presented by Charles Darwin, and various reactions to it. What follows is an essay that I prepared for my first exam in the class, in response to a question asking me to define and explain evolution according to Darwin. The essay on the exam turned out to be the other one, but I am posting this one nevertheless because I think that very few non-scientists ever actually properly learn the theory of evolution, and because even today that theory (minus all the advances we have made in genetics and similar fields since Darwin) is probably best presented in Darwin's own works (which even many scientists do not read). What follows hardly does justice to Darwin's own Origin of Species, of course, but I trust that it is an informative summary of his theory for those not very familar with it.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his seminal work, the Origin of Species. This book put forth Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, in which all current species descended from a common ancestor, rather than having been specially created by God. In his later work, the Descent of Man, Darwin expanded upon his evolutionary theory in relation to humanity. Darwin’s theory contended that all living things engage in a struggle for existence, in which only the fittest plants and animals survive. These beings pass on characteristics favorable to the struggle to their offspring, and as different groups within a species develop different favorable traits, new and separate subspecies are formed. Over long enough periods of time, not only new subspecies, but new species, new genera, new families, and even new orders develop. In this way, Darwin says, we can see how different plants and animals, including humankind, could all have evolved from a common ancestor.

In the Origin, Darwin writes that species reproduce at a remarkable rate, but that populations nevertheless tend to remain stable over time. This is because the limited resources of the earth do not allow all offspring to survive. All living things engage in a metaphorical struggle for existence, in which they struggle for the resources necessary to live and copulate, many of them inevitably being destroyed in the process. Darwin observes that the offspring of living things tend to be like their parents. This is called heredity. At the same time, however, offspring differ from their parents within certain hereditary limits. This is called variation. Because of variation, offspring are able to develop traits that enable them to better succeed in the struggle for life. Because of heredity, they are able to pass these traits onto their offspring. The result of this is that unfavorable traits in the struggle for existence do not tend to get passed on, as the beings with them do not succeed in the struggle to survive and reproduce.

Darwin terms the propagation of favorable traits rather than unfavorable traits in nature “natural selection.” It is analogous to “artificial selection,” in which a breeder encourages the breeding of animals with desirable characteristics. Just as a dog breeder intentionally encourages the breeding of dogs possessing desirable characteristics, such as size, so as to eventually produce a large breed of dog, so the blind forces of nature unintentionally encourage the breeding of, for instance, swifter carnivorous wolves which can more easily catch their prey. These new animals might eventually produce a subspecies of wolf; at the same time, wolves which preyed on slower, stronger animals, might eventually form a bulkier, but slower, subspecies. Darwin explains variations which have no relevance in the struggle for life (such as the peacock’s extravagant tail, which has no conceivable survival benefits) as results of sexual selection. Sexual selection works by males and females, usually the latter, being choosy about their sexual partners, not only on the basis of traits necessary for survival, but on the aforementioned secondary traits which make partners sexually attractive. Males who are thus not able to mate (for wont of attractiveness), will end up producing no offspring; those who end up mating less desirable females will be less vigorous, and produce less offspring than their more vigorous competitors.

Darwin states that the struggle for existence is invariably greatest between similar species, which fill similar ecological niches. He gives the example of an increase of missel-thrushes in Scotland causing the decrease of song-thrushes. Because of this, if two closely related species are competing, the species that descend from them (via natural selection) tend to be more different from each other than the two original species were from each other, because these more diverse species can then fill dissimilar roles in the “economy of nature.” Darwin calls this the principle of divergence. With these new species, the process will repeat itself, so that over vast periods of time new species will arise and others will become extinct, and the surviving ones will be even more different from each other than the original species, so that after enough time, the resulting varieties of organisms become, in fact, different genera. In fact, given vast enough periods of time, not only new genera, but new families, or even orders, could all evolve from the same original species.

Darwin suggests that, in fact, all different species, families, etc.—including humans—did evolve from a common ancestor. He believes that this theory better accounts for the facts than the special creation of species does. For instance, he observes that rules governing deviation of both species and subspecies are the same, which would be strange if species were separately created but subspecies were not. Darwin believes that the very fact that it is possible to group living things into subspecies, species, genera, etc. into “one grand natural system” (Darwin, 134) supports the idea of a common ancestor. Darwin notes that under special creation, living things are created for their specific environments, and therefore, ought to be similar to beings in similar environments. In reality, however, beings are more closely related to other beings near to them geographically than ones across the globe but in similar ecological environments, implying evolution and development separate from each other. Finally, the existence of seemingly useless parts in living things, such as webbed feet on geese which do not swim, suggests descent from beings for which they were not useless, rather than the special creation of parts that serve no purpose. For human beings, Darwin gives the specific example of the ear: all humans have muscles for the purpose of moving our ears by themselves, and a few people are capable of doing this. While special creation can give no reason that this should be so, if we assume evolution, we can see that this trait is a remnant of long-lost ancestors, who could have raised their ears so as to better perceive danger.

Science and Religion

2007-05-18T17:18:00.000-04:00

All first year students at Messiah College are required to take a First Year Seminar (FYS), a course which serves as both an introduction to college-level writing and an examniation of whatever specific topic your particular FYS is on. Those of us in the Honors Program take an Honors FYS. My FYS was called Galileo and the Church: The Conflict of Science and Faith?, and was taught by Distinguished Professor of the History of Science Ted Davis. This last semester, I took another Honors course with Dr. Davis, Darwin and Darwinism. Both of these courses have been formative in my own understanding of the intersection of science and religion. (Getting to perform in Inherit the Wind this semester only made the class that much more enjoyable.) While I was never one to champion the warfare model (from either side of the science-religion spectrum), that was more from simply not having thought about these matters than anything else. Now I feel I have a well informed idea of how science and religion do--and do not--relate (both historically and contemporarily), as well as how much stock to put in various models for "reconciling" science with traditional Christian belief (e.g., young-earth creationism, Intelligent Design, theistic evolution). These are the kinds of issues which I think almost everyone finds interesting, so I think I will be so bold as to post a few of my writings from Darwin and Darwinism, in the hopes that you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. And I would love, too, to read what responses you might have to my writings, particularly in regards to Intelligent Design, being such a "hot button" issue nowadays.

So I've gone and done it...

2007-05-16T00:37:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've gotten a blog. Actually, I had a blog--have, I guess, as it's still there--but I hardly ever used it (my last update was after my European Concert Choir tour last semester), and I don't really like the format or the site. I knew that if I ever actually started seriously blogging I would probably start a blog on blogger. Have I decided to start seriously blogging, you ask? Well, I got this blog for a couple of reasons. The main one is that I am studying abroad all of next year, and plan on blogging my experiences (it's a lot easier than E-mailing people, plus it lets me keep a record of what I've done--although I might journal as well, we'll see). I'm going to Cairo, Egypt, in the fall, and (assuming I get accepted) Oxford, England, in the spring. The second one is that I do occasionally get the urge to write about something or to upload some work that I've done, but don't feel like using my old blog. Plus, I hope that with my majors, work that I upload/write about will be more accessible than the stuff Vaughn writes about. Although I suppose that a lot of Philosophy writing is just as convoluted as that, and probably contains a lot less substance. It's probably still more interesting, though.

Also, now that I'm done classes, I might actually have time to write stuff occasionally. For those of you who don't know, I'm working here at Messiah this summer, in the Admissions Office (telephoning people/giving tours/doing office work). I get two weeks off and I hope to spend those in Manitoba--I'm not yet sure what weeks to take off (any ideas?).

In conclusion, don't expect daily, or even weekly, updates, but I will probably write stuff occasionally when I'm bored, and then hopefully post regularly when I'm abroad.