Jim Daly and how to argue effectively

While my computer was down I read an article by Jim Daly on why gay marriage is a bad idea. Jim Daly is the President of Focus on the Family. You can read his article here. http://www.focusonlinecommunities.com/blogs/Finding_Home/2011/05/24/why-same-sex-marriage-will-fail I found his arguments to be so poor that if I wasn't already certain that gay marriage is bad I would be convinced it's a good idea. So that vein here are four general guidelines to making an effective argument.

1. Be as consistent, honest, and reasonable as you can. Inconsistency is not just a sign of hypocrisy, it's a guarantee of a bad argument. If you're not honest no one should listen to you. You can demand that someone account for every logically possible explanation for X, but this is quite unreasonable as there are a lot of highly improbable but logically possible explanations for X. If you demand that every possible explanation is ruled out (or in) than nothing can get accomplished as it is nearly impossible for anyone to meet that demand.

2. If you use any evidence, statistics, or premises that are not obvious or are controversial, make certain you cite the sources or prove the premise. You don't have to cite a mathematician if you claim that 2+2=4, as that is obvious to everyone who knows math. However if you are talking about theoretical calculus than citing a mathematician or proving the premise is necessary.

3. Make sure you use good logic and reason and don't use any logical fallacies. A lot of "common sense" is logically fallacious. The most common example is that most people do believe that correlation establishs causation. It doesn't.


4. Keep your argument as simple and easy to follow as possible. Don't start arguing for socialized health care and wind up "proving" that people are basically evil. Some problems and issues are quite complicated and it can be difficult to keep them simple. The process oil goes through from extraction to fuel for a car is logistically very complicated. If an "argument" is tracing this process it will get long and quite complicated. But even here if the process is explained well enough it will be easy to follow. Doing this will make your argument stronger and enable you to communicate with people better.

There are other guidelines that can help, but following these ones should keep you in good shape.
How do Daly's arguments shape up? Well pretty poorly. The only one of these criteria Daly meets is part of the first one. Daly is honest, but every other aspect of his argument(s) is terrible. Nothing he says is convincing because his argument(s) is fallacious, unreasonable, needlessly complicated, and he doesn't cite anything.

It's not clear if Daly is giving one argument or several because his article lacks a clear thesis (a single statement summarizing his main point) and the organization of his article is poor. He says he can argue against same sex marriage, "On the basis of logic, reason, common sense and the fact that preservation of traditional marriage is in the best interest of the common good, as evidenced by any number of factors, including reams of social science data and thousands of years of history." But then he jumps all over the map. He discusses things that seem to have no relation to gay marriage (abortion) and ends up arguing that gay marriage advocates are infringing on religious rights (Which may be true, but it in no way establishes that gay marriage is a bad idea; it establishes that proponents of the idea have behaved badly).

Daly doesn't cite a single source for any of his evidence or premises. He is arguing from social science statistics (which are vague and often misleading under the best of circumstances) but he doesn't say where he is getting his evidence. I don't think he is making them up, but without the citations I can't know that, and I can't check the evidence to make sure it is accurate (perhaps the social scientists Daly got his information from used bad methodology?).

Daly's argument(s) are fallacious because the actual arguments he gives have little or nothing to do with gay marriage. Whether previous social and cultural changes had good or bad results doesn't establish that gay marriage will have a good or bad result. Each cultural change must be judged on it's on merits (or lack there of) not the fact that other changes had bad results.

Daly doesn't even effectively argue that these other changes had negative effects. Don't misunderstand, I stand with him in affirming that things like abortion and cohabitation are morally wrong. However he's trying to argue that such things have directly lead to certain social ills, but he's using a common logical fallacy. He's assuming that correlation does establish causation, and it doesn't. The fact that cohabitation and child abuse increased at the same time doesn't establish a causation between the two. Maybe it's the other way around and child abuse caused the increase in cohabitation?

I am quite convinced that gay marriage is a bad idea and is morally wrong, but nothing Daly said in the article effectively argues that fact. Part of the reason I decided to critique Daly is that I affirm his conclusion, but the way he got there is just terrible. It is important to critique people you agree with when they use bad arguments and reasoning. One of the primary problems with most ideological and political groups in America is failure to be self critical.

So don't argue like Daly. Make every effort to keep your arguments reasonable, consistent, logical, simple, and always cite your evidence (when appropriate). Otherwise you'll be acting like a congressman or a fool.

Pacifism and Christianity

I have come to the conclusion that a Christianity that demands Pacifism of Christians is incoherent.  More simply put, Pacifism and orthodox Christianity are incompatible. To help clarify;
I will state my premises and argument, define the terms, expand and elaborate on my points and argument, and then I will defend against probable counter arguments.  I have deliberately organized my argument this way so it is easier to see my presuppositions and conclusions.  This should make it easy to understand and address my argument.

Basic Argument: Claiming Christianity demands Christians be Pacifists is logically fallacious because it conflicts with one of Christianity’s key tenants, its universality.  Christianity holds that it is for everyone everywhere, so to demand that Christians be Pacifists is to require everyone everywhere be Pacifists.  However, this undermines the universality of Christianity because some type of violence is required for any human society to function.  So to maintain that Christians must be Pacifists requires that some people in the world (the people performing the necessary violence) either not be Christians or not follow their faith completely.  Christianity is then not universal.  If violence is necessary for any human society to function and if Christianity is for everyone, then not all Christians can be Pacifists.  Some or perhaps even most Christians could be Pacifists, but they cannot all be.

Terms: I am defining Christianity in the broad sense as everything that affirms the truth of grace through Christ’s death and resurrection and God’s revelation of himself in the Bible.  This includes virtually all Protestant and Catholic denominations, but excludes groups like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.  I am defining Pacifism as the strict adherence to non-violence in all circumstances.  Not all people who call themselves Pacifists define the term this way.  There are people who describe themselves as Pacifists who would use some forms of violence to defend their lives or their families’ lives but always object to fighting in wars.  Some Pacifists say only non-lethal violence should be used, (which I don’t think is possible, but that’s for another time) and there are other variations.  The critique I am making only fully works against Pacifism in its strictest sense.  The more tolerant of violence the Christian Pacifist becomes the less valid my critique is.  I will occasionally use the word “exceptional” and here I mean this as something that is non-universal or rare.  I am not defining it here as something that is both rare and praiseworthy.

Premise One:  Violence is necessary for any human society to function.  Many people are likely appalled by this, but it is true.  Every human society has had (and needed) laws.  Whether these laws are primarily social, legal, or cultural in nature does not matter.  I am yet to find anyone who will argue that a society without laws (in the broadest sense of the term) existed or that any group of people living together doesn’t need some set of rules.  Even if those laws are things like, “the law of the jungle” or an unwritten and unspoken set of rules, they are still laws in every practical sense.  Everyone agrees (at least I’ve found no one who disagrees, if anyone is aware of someone who does please let me know) that such rules are necessary.  People who claim we don’t need laws usually mean that we don’t need written laws.  They think that cultural and social laws or laws of common sense are enough.  That may be true, but the point is that at a practical level even these more basic rules function in way that is indistinguishable from a written code.  I’ve never found an anarchist in the truest sense.  They simply think that non-written laws are better than formal rules, but even these are still laws.

Laws always require enforcement.  Any law without enforcement is as useless as a rock band without instruments, a gun without bullets, or a day without coffee.  We have laws that say don’t murder or steal, but if nothing is done to prevent or deter the murder and the thief the laws are useless.  The murder keeps killing and the thief keeps stealing.  The point of a law is to prevent certain types of behavior or to make it unlikely the behavior will occur again.  So to have laws makes some type of enforcement necessary.  Law enforcement (the concept and the police) have taken a lot of different forms, but all of these forms can be traced back to violence or the threat of violence.  All law enforcement takes its power from violence or the threat of violence, so it is impossible to enforce laws without violence.  I am quite sure this statement will generate many objections, but I encourage any objector to trace back the forms of enforcement and punishment to their source.  The source is always violence or the threat of violence.

Violence and the threat of violence are indistinguishable in this sense.  It is true that often people with no intention of violence will threaten it (which makes them liars), but the threat only holds power if someone believes it will be carried out.  If everyone only threatened violence and no one carried it out (it would be a wonderfully comical world) the threats would be useless.  As an analogy, suppose all the police in a fictitious city were given orders to always threaten to shot suspects but never actually do it.  Assuming that all the police followed the order things would probably go well for a while.  But eventually word would get around that Fictitious City Police threaten violence but never carry it out.  Crime would probably rise and the police would be ineffective because they would have lost their power.  While this is a fictitious example, the principal holds true.  Threats of violence require actual violence backing them up to be effective.  So threats of violence and actual violence are indistinguishable in any way that matters here.  Even something like a monetary fine as law enforcement is still a violent act at its core.  Money is being forcibly taken from someone in a fine.  If he refuses to pay the fine, law enforcement will have to use violence or threaten him so he will pay.

Because societies always need laws and some type of violence to enforce them, some type of violence (however limited I hope) is always necessary for society to function.

Premise Two:  Christianity claims it is universal.  By this I mean that Christianity claims it is for the whole world.  Not every religion makes this claim.  I doubt anyone who has studied Christianity will disagree with me here.  There are numerous references in the Bible that make it plain that Christ and New Testament authors regarded Christianity as the way for all men (a non-gender specific use of “men” here).

There are some types of denominations that try to work around this universality.  Usually they stream from or relate to Calvinism.  They basically try to have it both ways by claiming that Christianity is and is not universal.  That is a horrific simplification, but I’ll get more in depth on it later.
So Christianity is universal.  Its scriptures claim it is, and its adherents claim it is, and historically it has made efforts to spread all over the world.

Conclusion:  The conclusion rests on the law of non-contradiction.  A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same context.  So Christianity cannot be Universal and non-Universal at the same time.  It cannot demand an exceptional tenant and be Universal.  If Christianity demands both things, it is logically fallacious.  To use plain speak, it just doesn’t make sense and we should reject it.  So I am forced to conclude that a version of Christianity that demands all Christians be Pacifists is a logically self-defeating concept.  Essentially;
1. Human societies require at least some violent actions.
2. Christianity claims it is for all human societies.
3. So given 1 and 2,
4. Christianity must allow for at least some violent actions.

This does not mean that Christians cannot be Pacifists, they can be.  After all a Christian can be any number of things that not all Christians can be.  For example, some Christians are women and some are men.  Clearly it is not a problem that the female Christians cannot become male Christians and visa versa (Major surgery does not count here because it does not change the chromosomes that produce gender).  It would be problematic if all the female Christians claimed all the male Christians had to become women to be “true Christians” because clearly this is not possible (However I have attended some churches where men are required to act more like women than men).  Likewise, a Christian can be a Pacifist so long as he does not claim that all Christians must be Pacifists.  Essentially a person’s Pacifism must not come from Christianity, but from somewhere else.  Maybe the person just does not like the thought of violence in the same way that I abhor the thought of decaffeinated coffee.  There are many principals Christians can embrace that are separate from Christianity.  Nearly all American Christians think democracy and free speech are wonderful principals.  But these principals come from being an American, not from being a Christian.  Christians in other parts of the world may find the idea of free speech to be dangerous and democracy to be an incredibly inefficient form of government.

Separating Pacifism and Christianity does  not mean that Pacifism is inherently stupid or bad.  It is usually high minded, good intentioned, and the worst that can be said of it is that it is naïve.  It probably is the best default approach to a lot of situations.  Pacifism just cannot be logically demand as the answer to all conflicts by a worldview that claims to be universal.

So I have concluded that it is not logically valid to claim that following Christ demands Pacifism.  If you want to be a Pacifist for other reasons, that is fine as the contradiction only lies in the requirement (but examine your other reasons to see if they are valid).  It is as logically valid to be a Christian and a Pacifist as it is to be a Christian and an American.  But it is as foolish to claim that all Christians must be Pacifists as it is to claim that all Christians must be Americans or Europeans.

An Out:  For those who do not like my conclusion I can offer you an out.  If either of my two premises are wrong the whole argument fails.  So find a reason why one of them are wrong.  The easiest out is to join a Christian denomination that does not believe Christianity is Universal (Yes they do exist and are considered orthodox).  Most of these denominations are off-shots of Calvinism or relate to it in some way.  Part of Calvinism is the idea of the Elect.  Only these Elect people will actually be saved and the rest are . . . well they’re pretty much damned.  This is a terribly unfair summery, but the point is that these denominations do not actually claim Christianity is Universal, so there is no logical problem if they also demand Pacifism.  I think there are good reasons to reject Calvinism and similar ideas, but I’m not writing here to refute them.  It is worth noting the most of these variations of Christianity soften the blow of Non-Universality by claiming that people cannot know who the Elect are, only God knows.  However, that reintroduces the logic problem of demanding Pacifism with Christianity (If only God knows who the elect are then it is impossible for us to know who is saved and thus impossible for us to know who is required to be a Pacifist).

Two Counter Arguments: “Violence is not necessary for human society to function.”  This counter claim to premise one can take several forms.  Some people claim that society can be organized in ways that do not require violence (while admitting that at least most of them are).  Some people will argue that as Christians should not conform to the world so we should not allow for violence even if human society requires it.  I am sure there are other variations, but I think these two statements cover most of them.

I say that if we can organize society in way that does not require violence, great let’s do it.  So now . . . how do we do it?  I’ve tried to do some research on this and while my research is in no way exhaustive (I am only 28), I have been unable to find any society that does not have at least a small threat of violence at work somewhere in it, and I have seen no theories or examples that can work for larger groups of people for long periods of time.  I can find no evidence for the claim that society can be organized without violence.  Saying “We can do X” does not mean that we can do X, you need to provide evidence and reasons why we can do X.

Pacifistic theorists often like to cite Amish and Mennonite communities as the very evidence I cannot see.  While I find much to admire in Amish and Mennonite approach to life, I do not see how they can be held up as examples of non-violent communities because they are not independent communities.  The ones in the United States enjoy the protection of the local police and the international protection of the US military.  They can afford to be as pacifistic as they want to be because they do not have to worry about protecting themselves from external evil and violence.  If some Amish or Mennonite people operated their own sovereign country, I think that would be a very strong case worth considering.  But they don’t, so it’s not.  Most citizens can and probably should be as pacifistic as the Amish and Mennonites are.  Having police and military enable people to act non-violently and that is a good thing.

Saying “It might be different” doesn’t mean it is different, so saying we might be able to have a society without violence does not mean we can.  Until someone can show demonstrate a workable and plausible way of organizing society without violence, I have to conclude that we need the violence.  I do welcome ideas and theories about how else society might be organized.  If there are non-violent ways of minimizing and suppressing evil and suffering, I would like to know about them.

The second counterargument revolves around Christians specifically.  This counter argument does not dispute that human societies need violence, but claims that Christians should not act like the rest of humanity in regards to violence.  There are several different ways of justifying this claim, but they all say that Christians should act separate (in some fashion, not necessarily physically separate) from the rest of humanity.  While this is certainly true about some things (they will know we are Christians by our love ) it is not true in a broad general sense.  Christians still have to eat food and sleep, so we are not completely separate from the rest of humanity.  Simply arguing that Christians should be separate from the rest of the world is not enough; the argument must establish that the issue of violence is one of the areas that is separate.  This is where I find these counterarguments fail.  If “Christ told us to be separate from the world” is used to claim that Christians should not use violence the same argument and logic can be used to claim that Christians shouldn’t eat, sleep, or do anything else that someone else in the world does.  Clearly Christians need to eat and sleep.  This counter argument is fallacious because it is too broad.

My purpose here is simply to establish the logical relationship between Christianity and Pacifism.  I am not attempting to explain the hows and whys of when violence is justified and when it is evil.  That is a far more difficult and complicated topic which I am not covering here.  It is clear that most violence is evil and unjustifiable.  Nothing I say here should be used to justify specific acts of violence as that would be evil and logically fallacious.  But I think it is clear that a Christian police officer can be justified in shooting a dangerous criminal, and a Christian soldier can be justified in killing enemy soldiers to protect his country.

So I have concluded that if you want to be Pacifist and a Christian that is fine.  Just don’t tell other Christians they have to be Pacifists to follow Christ.  That would be unlike Christ.

Evolution and Christianity

 A couple of weeks ago I used Facebook to ask, “Is some type of Macro Evolution compatible with orthodox Christianity?” The results were . . . interesting. Nine people said yes, ten people said no, and three people gave other answers. One person said “Only within the theory of multiverse. A universe for each side” so I think it’s safe put that vote under no. Two people said “The wording is too general to give an answer that is not misleading.” (I find this distressing as I deliberately tried to make the wording specific and avoid that problem). As we live a democracy, I think we can now say the issue has been decided by a majority vote. Evolution is not compatible with Christianity due to the truth of democratic principles.

Well actually that doesn’t settle it. Despite what the Ds, Rs, and Foxnews say, a majority opinion does not create reality and is not in and of itself an indicator of truth. So the issue remains. I am unsure which way to go here as I see good reasons for accepting and rejecting both positions.

It is quite clear that Christianity is not compatible with Naturalistic Darwinian Evolution as the later assumes the non-existence of God (or any god that could in anyway matter). People who assert that these two can go together do not understand what they are talking about. However with Macro Evolution (the idea that Micro Evolution leads species to change into other species over a great period of time and that this process is responsible for the existence of all species) the issue is different. As Macro Evolution is a question of process (how questions) it does not seem to directly conflict with Christianity (which seems more concerned with why questions). If such a conflict exists, it is not as obvious and apparent as with Naturalistic Evolution. The question is, could God have used Evolution to produce all the life on Earth and if so, did he?

Option 1, they can/do go together:

Pros Arguments:

1. Variants of Evolution are the primary accepted theory in most of culture and accepting it allows Christians to be viewed with more intellectual respect (but this is also a con).

2. While Naturalistic Evolution is an incoherent belief (due to the is/ought problem, the great statistically improbability of much of it, etc) Theistic Evolution (the belief that God in some way used Marco Evolution) is not, in and of itself. All of the logical and coherence problems of Evolution are solved if you presuppose that God directed Evolution for his purposes.

3. There is a great deal of very good evidence that suggests the world and the Universe are quite old. If the world and the Universe are quite old, this is good grounds for accepting part of the Evolution narrative.

4. If you suppose that God directs it, the lack of good biological evidence for Evolution is a no longer a problem. God can direct Evolution as he wants to get around the statistical problems and he could accelerate it temporarily (which would account for the extreme lack of transitional fossils).

5. On a micro level, Evolution is an observable and testable phenomena that only a fool could deny.

6. Lots of intelligent Christians hold to Theistic Evolution with integrity (Francis Collins, Hugh Ross, C.S. Lewis, NT Wright, and Pope John Paul II). While this can be an appeal to authority, many of these people are good authorities on this subject (Francis Collins is a geneticist, Hugh Ross is an astrophysicist, N.T. Wright is a biblical scholar, etc).

Con Arguments:

1. Variants of Evolution are the primary accepted theory in most of culture and accepting it allows Christians to be viewed with more intellectual respect. As I established above, a majority opinion does not establish truth (although if everyone says you are wrong you’d be a fool not to consider it) so if the primary reason for accepting evolutionary theory is that most people say it’s right, that’s stupid. Additionally Christians should expect to have at least some beliefs that bother/offend the rest of the world; Christ said as much (John 15:18).

2. You must modify or in some other way explain the Creation story in Genesis as non-literal or allegorical. This is at best very difficult to do. There are some important sub points here.

     a. Everywhere in scripture where allegory/metaphor is used there are indicators that it is being used. No such indicators exist in the first few chapters of Genesis.

     b. It is at best very difficult to explain why the word day would mean something different in Genesis 1 than elsewhere in the book. Some noble theories have been purposed for this, but they all require some real fancy dancing that leads to inconsistencies (they require you to apply different rules of interpretation to Genesis 1 than the rest of Genesis).

     c. Some fundamental Christian theology (the nature and value of man, relationship of the sexes, the fall, etc) depend on the Creation and Fall story. If this story is discarded/marginalized it is difficult to legitimize these doctrines. i.e. It is really hard to explain how man is made in God’s image if he evolved from lesser creatures and shares ancestry with apes and monkeys.

3. You can disregard the Genesis story as false, but this also causes problems.

     a. If one part of scripture is demonstrably false why believe in any of it and as such why bother being a Christian? Once some of it is truly undermined, all of it must be called into question.

     b. If God offers a portion of scripture that is untrue, this means he is/has deceived us. Yet this is radically opposed to the nature of God that scripture presents. Pagan gods deceive and scheme, but God says that he cannot lie.

     c. Again fundamental Christian theology is no longer valid or very difficult to justify. If the Genesis story is completely false, how can Christians assert that people are made in the image of God or that everyone is sinful and in need of Christ to save them?

4. At least some elements of the evolutionary process do not seem to be in keeping with God’s character. It appears to be a cruel and unforgiving process that punishes the weak and needy. Compare this to Christ’s words at the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and you will see the apparent discrepancy. How could the same God who doesn’t forget one sparrow (Luke 12:6) use a process that would have left 99% of the species that ever existed extinct?

Option 2, They do not/cannot go together.

Pro Arguments:

1. It takes scripture and Genesis literally, so there is no need for odd or unusual jumps in interpretation and understanding.

     a. It maintains a strong view of scripture.

     b. It doesn’t have to deal with the doctrinal/theological problems of the other view.

2. We have very good reasons to trust the accuracy of other parts of scripture (read The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by FF Bruce) so it is reasonable to trust scripture in regards to Genesis. I.e. Where we can verify scripture and see if it conforms to reality it does, so it’s reasonable to trust it where we cannot check it.

3. While there have been divergent views on Creation through history, a literal view of Genesis does seem to be the most commonly held view of Christians throughout Church history (but as above, this doesn’t establish that it is correct, only that a lot of people came to this conclusion).

4. While Evolution is an observable and testable phenomenon on a micro level, this does not in and of itself establish that it happens on a macro level. Asserting so is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. I.e. If Macro Evolution is true, we would be able to observe Micro Evolution. We can observe Micro Evolution so Macro Evolution is true. The trouble with this argument is that Micro Evolution can exist independent of Macro Evolution so the existence of it does not guarantee the other. There are a large number of other reasons why Micro Evolution might exist.

5. If scripture said it, scripture is trustworthy, and God’s word is revealed in scripture, God said it, so it must be true.

6. Basing beliefs entirely on “scientific evidence” and “well accepted facts” can be foolish as such evidence has been demonstrated false before. Consider any of the missing link fossils which have all been demonstrated to be hoaxes or mistakes. This doesn’t establish that there is no missing link, it establishes that some of the “evidence” scientists cited was false.

Con Arguments:

1. You must explain why the world and Universe appear very old when they are not.

     a. You can say God created the Universe with the appearance of age, but this falls into the problem of God being deceptive.

     b. You can say that geologists are mistaken, but this is a pretty difficult thing to maintain in the face of plate tectonics and light from stars billions of years away reaching Earth.

2. You have to tell the majority of culture and the scientific community that they are wrong and refusing to see reality.

     a. While this is a coherent theory/explanation, it is unpleasant and will lead to alienation.

3. A lot of Creationist cite bad evidence and disregard the rules of logic (i.e. don’t submit to reality) when making their case.

     a. This doesn’t make Creationism false, but it does put you in the same camp as anti-intellectual fools.

So if you are a theistic evolutionist I think you must explain why the first few chapters of Genesis conflict with your belief. If you decided the Creation story is wrong, you must explain why Christianity has any validity as its primary source is now suspect.

Conversely if you believe Evolution and Christianity are incompatible, you must explain why the Earth and Universe appear so old, and you must explain why so many educated people say you are wrong.

Why doesn't the government work? Because it's not in it's nature to work.

The US government is inefficient because it is it’s nature to be inapt.  All democracies are inherently inapt and inefficient because it is one of their primary traits.

The US constitution (The government’s Bible) is essentially a list of things that government can and cannot do.  Rather than laying down general guiding principles like a religious text, it specifically denies and gives the government certain rights over its citizens.  The constitution sets up the government this way because the primary idea behind a democratic government is that government is inherently oppressive and evil (but often a necessary evil).  Given the choice between oppressing and controlling its citizens and letting them act freely a government will nearly always oppress them.  Consider that the government’s reaction to nearly every problem is to create additional methods of control.  For terrorism, they created the Department of Homeland Security.  For medical issues, they created the Affordable Health Care Act.  Regardless of intentions, the default response of every government to every problem is to acquire and institutionalize more control. 
A democracy or republic seeks to solve this problem by weakening the government by making it directly (or indirectly in the case of a republic) subject to its citizens.  The trade off is that this will make the democratic government inefficient and slow as it is subject to wills and ideas of a lot of different people who will have conflicting ideas and opinions about what it should do.  A republic tries to counter this inefficiency be adding a medium (the elected officials) between the voters and the actions of the government; however a review of republican governments (not the party) around the world quickly establishes that this is only marginally successful.

The point is that all democratic and republican governments will always be inefficient and inept.  It is built into the definition of what they are.  A ball will always be a round and spherically shaped object.  It’s the definition and nature of a ball to be round.  Likewise a democratic government will always be inefficient and inept by its nature and definition.

The few areas of the US Government that display a high level of competence and efficiency are organized and run in ways that are extremely undemocratic.  The US military is highly efficient and competent, but it is organized like an Empire or a totalitarian state.  Soldiers do not vote on what they want to do, who their commander is, or who they get to attack.  The soldiers have almost no say over these things.  This is a very undemocratic way of running a military that exists to serve a democracy, but thank God it is organized that way.  If the US military were run more like Congress or the Department of Education, the US would cease to exist.

No politician seems to understand this foundational aspect about our type of government.  Both of the major parties actively seek to expand the scope of government and increase the control it has over aspects of our lives (What the parties want to expand does very greatly).  This is a foolish and illogical agenda that conflicts with nature and definition of what the U.S. government is.  It’s akin to trying to use a sports car to haul firewood.  Even if everything the parties are trying to do is good and will help people (and that’s very unlikely), it still is an extremely foolish and inefficient way to address these problems and issues.  A pickup truck works far better for hauling wood.  Likewise there are other institutions and social constructs that can far better address social and economic issues.
By the nature of what it is, a democratic government should only involve itself as a measure of last resort.  It should actively try to do as little as possible because it is highly unlikely it will be able to do much of anything well.

The argument is;
1.  Democracy is defined as a government that shares power among a majority of its citizens by voting.
2.  Sharing power in this fashion causes the government to be ineffective and inept as three people take longer to make a decision than one and those three people will never completely agree (and over 130 million people voted in the 2008 election).
3.  As a democracy is inherently ineffective and inept, attempting to actively use it to solve problems is foolish and runs contrary to its nature.

A democratic government’s primary bonus is lessening the chance of tyrants and despots gaining power by spreading out that power.  However this severally lessens the government’s ability to handle and address problems.  If we want to live in a democracy or a republic and get things done, we cannot depend on the government.  The number one mistake U.S. politicians make is trying to use the government in a way that is contrary to its nature.  We need to stop demanding that they haul firewood in their sports cars for us and use our own pickup trucks instead.

What does all this have to do with awesome Calvin and Hobbes strip I opened with?  Well Calvin is thinking about writing the same way politicians are thinking about the government.  Clearly the point of good writing is to communicate effectively and clearly.  When writing is used for purposes other than clear communication, you get disastrous and foolish results (like academia).  I can appreciate that it is a little more difficult to see the inept nature of democracy, but when we attempt to use a democratic government in a way that assumes it will be competent we are behaving as foolishly as Calvin.

Water boarding

With recent events the question of whether or not water boarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" actually work has resurfaced. But the rather than asking whether or not it works, we should be asking if it is morally justifiable.  Only if it is does the question of whether or not it works become a valid question.

Killing is sometimes good, but it is still tragic. A Christian response to the Celebrations of bin Laden’s Death.

I had mixed feelings when I watched the news on Sunday night/Monday morning.  While I was pleased to hear that bin Laden had finally gotten his due (buzz says that it was SEAL Team Six, so I toasted them) I was quite disturbed to see so many people celebrating his death like it was the end of an election or Mardi Gras.  Well it is unclear just how big these celebrations were, that doesn’t affect the issue.  There are evil people who should die and when they are killed the world is made a better place, but this is tragedy, not a cause for celebration.

Some well-intentioned people question how the killing of anyone can be justified, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume here that killing evil people can be justified.  If it is possible to justify killing anyone, bin Laden certainly was one of them.  The man had caused the deaths of thousands of people and it is without question he would have killed more if he had the opportunity.  Killing him makes the world a better place and if I had been present on the raid to get him, I would have pulled the trigger myself.

However I wouldn’t have then raised my fist in the air and chanted “U.S.A.” over and over again (and I very much doubt any of the SEALS did that, only the Americans on the streets).  Just because something is good doesn’t mean it is something to be celebrated.  We celebrate things (like holidays) because they are pleasant and wonderful things that point to the good parts of life or encourage us to live better lives.  Not everything good is to be celebrated.  It’s a good thing that my digestive system works well but it would be pretty foolish of me to daily celebrate that fact.  Killing evil men to prevent them from doing more evil is a good thing, but it is a tragedy, not something to be celebrated.

Even in the Old Testament (were God commanded and commended a great deal of killing) killing was not regarded as something to be celebrated.  Soldiers or other men who killed people were considered unclean and needed to be ritually cleansed before they could rejoin the community. 

Bin Laden was a man with the image of God in him just the same as I am.  It’s tragic beyond measure that he perverted, blasphemed, and distorted that image of God to the point that it was necessary to kill him before he did more evil.  This is not fundamentally different than the tragic nature of the death of anyone who is brought to death by perverting and distorting the image of God within him.  No one celebrates in the streets when a man dies of AIDS because he distorted the image of God by living a lifestyle that separated him from God.  When that happens it’s a tragedy and we should all mourn the loss and the man’s wasted life.  Well I can’t quite bring myself to mourn for bin Laden (and if I could that might be an indicator of other problems) viewing his story as tragedy is a far more Christian response than celebrating with chants of “USA!”  He came to this point because he rejected the truth of Christ and that is tragic.  But I still raise a glass to SEAL Team Six, and I hope they find all the other evil men who need to die.

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In between a Bomb and a Child

I'd planned on posting something else today, but this short story now seems more appropriate.  It contains profanity so don't read it if you don't like such things.

“I don’t give a shit.”

Reese took a sip of his iced coffee and repeated himself.

“I don’t give a shit what the LT or anyone else says.  I’m not running over any little kids.”

Whoever decided to start serving iced coffee in the dining facilities was a genius.  Sure it wasn’t as good as the Starbuck’s lattes I was missing, but there a little goes a long way.  Iced coffee is relatively cheap and easy to make, and even having one cup of the stuff can make the whole day seem better.  The first time I noticed it in here; I drink nine glasses of it.  That was a bad idea.  I got sick.

            Despite my lack of a response, Reese was determined to make his case.

“I will not run over kids.  I’m just not going to do it.  If I see them, I’ll try to drive around them or avoid them in some other way, but I will not run over little kids.  I’ll stop the convoy before I do that.”

            I sighed.  I didn’t want to think or talk about this right now.

            Earlier in the day, Reese and I had been in a briefing with our squad.  Our team was completing our tour.  Sometime in the next week or two we’d pack up all our equipment and make the three day drive back down south.  Hopefully after that we’d be heading home.  That was what we’d been told, but we’d been told lots of things lots of times before.

            At this briefing the LT had brought up what Reese could not let go.  In the time since our initial trip up here, the insurgents had started strapping bombs to their own kids.  Then they would send the kids up to our convoys and when we stopped or reacted to the kids they would blow us both up.  I kinda figured that you’ve given up any legitimacy you ever had when you start blowing your own kids, but my thoughts on the matter didn’t seem to give the insurgents any pause, and as usually no one had asked me for my thoughts (well except Reese, but that’s another thing).

            Because of these attacks, Command had given, and the LT had repeated, a standing order to not stop a convey for any reason.

            “Do your best to avoid anyone in the road, but if you can’t avoid them, run them over.”  Reese repeated the Lieutenant’s order and shrugged. “I won’t do it.  I just won’t fucking do it.”

            “So you’d put us all at risk?” I asked him.

If Reese stopped a truck it would stop the whole convoy.  We wouldn’t leave anyone behind, so if one guy stopped we all would.  And most of the roads were far too narrow to allow us to drive around if someone stopped.  Even if a kid in the road turned out not to have a bomb on him, and it was probably more likely than not the kid wouldn’t be packing heat, Reese would still be putting us all at risk.  The insurgents made a habit of attacking convoys that were stopped.  Even the bad guys like to be efficient, and it’s hard to do a lot of damage to a group of trucks that are driving away.  So they would do things to stop convoys or wait for them to stop.  As long as we could keep moving our odds would be pretty good.  But if we had to stop, they would drop dramatically.

            “We’re all at risk here all the time.”  Reese countered.

            “That’s not what I meant and you know it.  Stopping for any reason gives them an opportunity to light us up.  If you stop the convoy you could easily get some of us killed.”

            “So what would you have me do?  Run the little fuckers down?  I can’t do that.”

            “No, no one wants that.  But can you really justify putting us all in danger only to satisfy your own conscious?”

            Reese frowned and took a drink of his iced coffee.  He set the cup down and pondered what I had said for a moment.  He stood his ground.

            “No.” He said, “Because it’s not about that.  We have to draw a line somewhere.  If I can run over those kids then I might as well be one of the murdering fuckers who strapped the bombs to them.  It’s not enough that we can kill them better than they can kill us, we have to be better than them.  If we’re not than what good is any of it?  That is worth my life, and I hope you’d say it’s worth yours or anyone else’s.”

            “How wonderfully idealistic.  Is that the reason we’re fighting them too?  Because we’re better than they are?”

            To my surprise Reese didn’t get angry he just shrugged and said.  “Dance around and away from the point all you like, you know I’m right.  What would you do instead?  Whatever your reasons you only have two options.”

            I would much rather have been thinking about getting some sleep that night.  Working continuously in such intense heat is very taxing and we were all always exhausted every night.  I wonder if maybe that’s part of the reason everyone in this part of the world is always so pissed off about everything all the time.  This much heat can’t be good for the human mind.

            “I don’t know.” I told him, “I’m hoping something will come to me before we start the convoy back.  Because I don’t like either option.  Two bad choices is really no choice at all.”

            Nothing came to me.  I started the long drive back without a clue what I was going to do if I saw a little kid in road.  All I thought about the whole way back was what to do, and I couldn’t figure anything out.

            It took us three days make the trip back, and none of us even saw a kid the whole way.

Grace is Good because we're so Bad.

Some of my friends have been trying to get me read Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins."  As people have already reviewed that book to death (just look at Amazon) I thought it would be more helpful to discuss/explain one of the questions he tries to answer.

Several months ago, a co-worker asked how I respond to a paradox within Christianity.  He explained that there are people who can never hear about Christ due to practical limitations (like time and geography).  Given this how can those people be saved?  I responded by pointing to some sections in Romans that talk about the gentiles becoming a law unto themselves (2:14).  I reason that this says God has adequately revealed himself in the world and other creation so he will judge people who have no access to scripture and knowledge of Christ based on that revelation.  This is a very common response to the paradox but he countered with another one.  If it is true that God can draw people unto him only by general revelation (creation and such) then by spreading the word of Christ we actually decrease the chances of someone being saved as this can introduce complications and other problems (I won’t list them here for brevity).  However this violates the Great Commission (Matthew 28) and other directives of Christ so we have a paradox.  Anyone who has seriously interacted with Christianity has encountered some form of this apparent paradox.  So what about the people who have not heard and cannot hear?

To put it simply, this is no problem.  In order for the question/paradox to be valid, it must in some way be unjust for God to allow people to perish with no chance to receive grace.  There are only two possible reason why this would be unjust; either people must in some way be worthy of a chance to receive grace or there must be a moral requirement on God to extend people grace. Neither of these are true (In Christianity, they might be aspects of other religions/worldviews).
It is unjust when people do not get what they deserve.  To say that it is unjust for some people to not receive grace due to lack of knowledge is to assume that these people deserve a chance to receive grace.  But they don’t deserve it; none of us do.  Every person who has ever lived deserves to go to hell, so there is nothing unjust about it if any of us do (no matter the reason).  I deserve to burn in hell.  The most honest and ethical person you have ever known also deserves to go to hell.  As I really am that bad, it in no way makes God unjust if he decides to arrange the world in such a way that I have no practical chance of knowledge of Christ (obviously he did not do that in my case).  The natural, logical, and necessary result of sin is death and damnation (James 1:15).  We are all sinners (Romans3:23, Psalm 14:2-3) so if God decides he doesn’t want to save some people (or all of us) there is nothing unjust or unfair about it.
1. Christianity teaches that everyone is sinful and unjustified.
2. No sinful or unjustified individual deserves a chance.
3. So under Christian teaching no man deserves a chance, regardless of how good he appears or how unfair this might seem.

Under Christian belief, there are no moral requirements on God; moral requirements come from him.  God is the source of all morality as what is moral is intrinsic to his nature (This is why God cannot sin.  Nothing can violate its own nature and sin is a violation of God’s nature).  The only possible moral requirement on God would be requirements he places on himself.  When he makes promises (to Abraham, David, or people in general) he is placing a moral requirement on himself.  When God swore a pact with Abraham, he swore by himself because there was no one greater for him to swear by (Hebrews 6:13).  A moral requirement is always placed on the individual by a higher authority.  There is no higher authority than God, so there is no one above him to place moral requirements on God.  This does not mean God is amoral or immoral.  As morality is an intrinsic and inherent part of his nature, God is the most moral and ethical thing that exists.  When Job says that God is treating him unfairly one of God’s responses is to say Job that he doesn’t know what he is talking about and that Job has no moral authority over him (Job 41).
1. God is the source of all morality and all moral requirements.
2. As the ultimate source of morality, there is nothing and no one else to hold moral requirements on God.
3. So the only moral requirements God has are those that he places on himself.

Additionally asking “what about those who don’t know” ignores the general revelation of God.  Christianity teaches that God has adequately revealed himself in creation so to assert that some people might not have a chance is simply false.  Everyone who has ever lived experiences creation so if God can be known through creation the question is nonsensical and foolish.  Psalm 14:1 calls atheists morally deficient, Psalm 19:1 says that creation proclaims God’s work, and Romans 1:18-20 says that God has made such things plain to people.  Either scripture is wrong or everyone really does know on some level.
1. People can only be morally responsible for what they know.
2. God has adequately revealed himself to everyone.
3. So everyone is morally responsible for knowledge of God.

The point is that if Christian teaching is true, I don’t deserve a chance, and God is in no way required to give me one.  What makes grace so amazing is that God does give me (and everyone else) a chance anyway.  The gap God crosses to offer us forgiveness is greater than the gap that a Jew who was killed in a concentration camp would cross to forgive Hitler.  If this seems like an excessive example; it’s not.  The example isn’t nearly strong enough, but I have a hard time thinking of a stronger one.  All of us have done far more evil to God than Hitler ever did to anyone.  None of us deserves a chance, so asking “What about people who haven’t heard?” is at best a misunderstanding of what Christianity espouses.

So why does this question bother so many people and why does it seem so unjust that a man who lived in a jungle in South America in 550 AD and tried to do right by those around him might be hell?  We cannot say that is through no fault of his own as everyone who exists is at fault and he has adequate revelation of God.  We cannot say it is because God is unjust.  Rather I think in most cases this question arises out of the ideals of Western/American culture.  Our culture is highly individualistic and believes very strongly that everyone deserves a chance.  A central idea of democratic style government is a high value on the individual and a belief that everyone deserves a say.  American culture’s primary belief of individual nature is that most people are basically good and reasonable (if this were not so no one would believe democracy is a viable form of government).  Because of this belief, we seek to treat everyone fairly and give everyone an equal chance.  We think they deserve it.  But (as I established above) no one deserves grace and salvation.  Many people have (most likely inadvertently) allowed the culture’s belief about the goodness of people to co-opt the Christian teaching about the depravity of man.

The question “What about those who haven’t heard?” may (and most likely does) come from the best of intentions, but it isn’t really a valid question if Christian teachings on God, sin, and human nature are true.  As God has a merciful and loving nature (he died for us after all) he hasn’t left those who haven’t heard to rot.  Rather he has ensured that everyone does get a chance by revealing himself in the world.  But if God had decided to refuse some people a chance there would be nothing morally or logically wrong with that.

This fact is what is so amazing and wonderful about grace.  We don’t deserve it, we shouldn’t get, and God doesn’t have to give it to us, but he still literally went through hell to give it to us.  Without the fact that we don’t deserve it, grace isn’t really that amazing.  If we are just getting a chance that we deserve, why is that all that impressive?  Christ said;
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.  And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.  But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back (Luke 6:32-35)."
What good would it be if God only gave us what we deserve?  To believe that people might deserve a chance at best cheapens grace to a moral requirement.  If this all grace is, than it is no longer based in love (love should transcend moral requirements according to Christ) and there is nothing that special about Christianity anymore.

So perhaps due to an accident of birth some people never hear about Christ.  As none of us deserve it, this is perfectly just.  But would the same God who comes up with something like grace just leave people to rot?  No, has revealed himself to everyone and he does care for us.  So praise God for grace and don’t inadvertently cheapen it by assuming we deserve it.  We don’t and that is why it is one of the most incredible things that exists.

Building a house of thought: From the middle out

This essay is my mission statement/purpose in writing things.


One of the chief difficulties in developing rational and consistent beliefs is that we all start in the middle.

The most appropriate analogy I can think of is building a house.  The best way to build a house is to plan it out on blueprints, start with the foundation, and work your way up from there.  (Yes, there is more involved in building a house than these three steps, but these three work for the analogy and arguing semantics in an analogy is like killing the patient to cure the disease).  If the house is my worldview, (a collection and construction of all my important beliefs) I walk into it not knowing if the foundation is any good, uncertain of what the original blueprints said, and only knowing a little bit about the external, visible aspects of it.  The house could have an exceptionally good foundation and be ready to stand for years, or it could have an awful foundation and be ready to collapse under its own weight.  It might be based on the best blueprints available, but the builder deviated from the plans and made a terrible house despite the good plans.  The point is that I don’t know the condition my worldview (or the house) when I get started.

The reason is that we acquire our foundational beliefs before we are mature enough and thoughtful enough to assess them.  We acquire these beliefs from a large variety of sources like family, culture, and social conditioning.  Since we acquire them before we were able to examine them rationally, these beliefs may or may not be good and rational; we have to look at them and see.  This is why we must question our foundational beliefs (Question does not mean blindly reject.  It means to examine the reasons and evidence for the beliefs and see if they work and match up with the reality of the world.  Most of the beliefs that most people have are correct and good because they are beliefs like “A chair is something people sit in.”)

In the house analogy, the wisest thing to do is to examine the house as completely as possible and determine what parts of it are good and what parts are bad.  The problem is that if this house is my worldview, I must live in it while I am evaluating it.  I have to determine if the sink works while I am using the sink.  Alternatively, for the worldview, I have to question my beliefs about the value of human life (until I find a good base for them) while using those questionable beliefs to interact with the other humans around me.  This is why we start in the middle.

A rational and consistent belief is a belief that is built off the foundation of other beliefs that are either certain (I exist) or so likely to be certain that to question them is irrational (my senses allow me to perceive reality).  For example, the belief that murder is evil is built off foundational beliefs like human life having value and the existence of morals.  In order for the belief that murder is evil to be good and rational the foundational beliefs it is built on must be reasonably certain (Very few things are absolutely certain but a lot of things are so reasonably certain that only fools question them).

But we still have to live in the world, and our interactions with the world require us to use our beliefs in a practical way.  So we must use the beliefs we have built on uncertain foundations while simultaneously questioning and evaluating those beliefs and their foundations.  In effect we all must start in the middle and push in both directions (At least until we have acquired some certain or fairly certain foundational beliefs).

As we start pushing in both directions, we will find that some of our beliefs do not match up with our foundational beliefs or vice versa.  Everyone has some inconsistent beliefs so if we start examining our beliefs we will notice these inconsistencies. In the house analogy, it would be like finding an addition without a foundation, or a foundation without anything built on it.

Two easy examples of inconsistent beliefs come from American political views on abortion.  A lot of people on the political left support abortion rights because they believe people have a right to privacy in medical issues and since abortion is a medical issue it should be kept private.  (The official legal justification for the right to abortions appeals to the Constitution’s “Right to Privacy”)  Conversely, the political right believes abortion is evil because it is the taking of innocent life.

The inconsistency on the political left is that many of the same people and groups who use the right to privacy to justify abortion also claim that the government should mandate/control health-care (Obviously, this is not true of all politically left groups).  If medical issues should be private than the government should have no business mandating or controlling it (as this makes medicine public).  The political left has a belief (government ran health-care) which conflicts with a foundational belief (right to privacy in health-care) of another of its beliefs (right to abortion).  If there is a right to privacy in health-care the political left is being inconsistent in its belief in government ran health-care.  Conversely, if that belief is abandoned, than the primary justification for the right to an abortion disappears.  Obviously, the Left is wrong in at least one of these beliefs.  (Of course, it is possible to find other foundational beliefs that support abortion or government ran health-care.)


The Right's inconsistency is that it does not apply the same standards of justification to abortion that it does to other acts of killing.  The political right believes abortion is wrong because they believe it is murder. Murder is the intentional taking of human life where there is little or no context and reason that could justify it. (If I kill someone because I drove my car too fast and crashed into him, I am responsible for his death, but I’m not a murder because I didn’t intend to kill him.  If I kill a man who broke into my house and is trying to kill me, again I am responsible, but I’m not a murderer because there is context that can justify the killing).

The Right also believes that at least some of the killing in war is justifiable and so not murder.  The Right reasons that the context and extreme nature of the situation(s) in and around war make certain acts of killing justifiable. The underlying belief is that the overall value of human life and dignity can be better adhered to by killing certain people in certain situations (Sometimes it is better to shoot the serial killer or rapist in the head to protect other people from them).  So the Right believes that context and circumstance can make killing justifiable (although they also say it often is not).

The inconsistency is in saying that context and circumstance cannot justify killing in the case of abortion, but it can elsewhere.  The only substantial difference between a born and unborn human is location (In most of the Right’s beliefs and mine). So if it is possible to justify any act that would otherwise be murder, than logically it must be possible to justify at least some abortions due to extreme or highly unusual situations. It’s about human life regardless of location.  The Right has to be wrong about at least one of those beliefs.

In these two examples, having inconsistent beliefs clearly does matter, but some inconsistent beliefs do not matter.  It is inconsistent to believe I am allergic to tomatoes if I eat and enjoy ketchup, but it doesn’t cause me or anyone else harm (other than the damage to my reputation because people will think I’m a moron).  One sign of maturity in thought is being able to distinguish between the inconsistent beliefs that matter and those that don’t.

None of us will ever be completely consistent in all our beliefs, but with mature thought and work, we can work through our inconsistent beliefs until they are all insignificant.  It’s possible to live in a house with rain gutters that clash with the paint color, but a house without a foundation will not last through any storms or rough times.  Likewise it’s possible to live in a worldview with insignificant inconsistencies (Like hating Xbox games while loving Playstation games), but a worldview that has important inconsistencies (like telling people language is inherently ambiguous) will not survive any serious life issues or introspection.

In order to live better lives we all need to push out of, find, and correct our inconsistencies.  Starting in the middle does make this difficult, but it is more than possible (I used to hold the Right’s inconsistent belief about abortion and war).  It is possible to live in a house that is falling apart for a little while, but it will be quite painful (if not fatal) when it collapses.  Likewise, it is possible to survive with inconsistent beliefs for a while, but when the inconsistencies collide, it will be quite painful (if not fatal).  To avoid this pain (or maybe death) strive to have consistent beliefs (and of course play both Xbox and Playstation games).  That is the purpose of good philosophy and what I am trying to do.