Add to the “to do” list.

I’ve been reading Plantinga’s new book on faith and science and reading Francis Beckwith’s posts on faith and reason in the courts. Both authors are tracking the fact that it is commonly held by so-called experts on religion that religion has nothing whatever to do with reason, including common sense, logic, norms of evidence, and science. Religion is outside of reason and not subject to reason. This is apparently the official view of society and shapes the presuppositions of politics, media, academia, and the courts.

This, in spite of the major work accomplished in the last decades on religious rationality and epistemology. Even religious experts seem not to be acquainted with it in their preparation. In fact, reason fits positively with religious perspectives while remaining an intractable problem for materialist ones. See: http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/faith-reason-and-secular-hegemony-cont.html

This means that Christians cannot count on an existing literacy about religion and reason, and that the must take it on themselves to make the case for religious reasoning. That has to be on our apologetic “to do” list.

And this certainly reflects on the impact that Karl Barth has had on religious studies. Barth’s view had become “the best thing going” for a “conservative” version of religion among religious studies. But Barth’s view, even especially compared to other sympathetic thinkers like Emil Brunner, strongly required that faith be wholey other than reason. Now we have to fight this trend, both for the sake defending the faith and religious freedom.

The Philosophicity of Adam

Many evangelicals have been disturbed by a recent trend in faith science reporting that rejects the idea of a historical Adam and Eve. Peter Enns work has utilized this idea to go so far as to reject contemporary believing biblical scholarship and to return to the older critical scholarship as a way if saving Christian faith, an approach many take to have the opposite effect of replacing Biblical Christianity with a religious sentimentalism akin to liberalism. If this is what it takes to save faith, better to just dump faith for some other philosophy.

Enn’s case seems to overreach. But the issue itself is pressing. The reason is that the evangelical gospel as it’s told in the Scripture requires a historical Adam to make sense of it’s account of redemption, as many theologians have argued. The problem is that there seems to be no reason to think that there could be a single first ancestor to the human race.

One of the surprising features of the fossil record is not merely the paucity of apparent transitional forms, contrary to what Darwinian evolution expects, but also the sudden “explosions” of the appearance of new species, starting with the Pre-Cambrian Explosion. Millions of years pass without any great sign of a species. Then suddenly not only does one appear but a lot do in a very short period of time relative to the scale of evolutionary history.

Evolution’s bane is Theism’s boon, except that science seems to be converging on the theory that the appearance of human beings is one of these explosions or at least that the critical mass of selected sophistication in our more ape-like ancestors was reached at several points over the wide spread population to firm humans. There are problems relating this idea with evidence that the whole human race descended from a specific region in Africa, but I don’t intend to get into such matters. I’m not a scientist.

I am a philosopher or at least I play one at school, and I wonder if philosophy may have any light to shed on this. This suggestion comes from several sources, from Plantinga to Pope John Paul II, but the suggestion is mine.

Assume for the sake of argument that the theory that several humans (say 250,000) appeared more or less at the same time all over the accessible continents. This is certainly a scientifically testable hypothesis. It may be what science can speak to.

But we also know more keenly is that science confronts one of it’s epistemic limits in trying to relate the mind to the brain. This was a key point in the methods of science and phenomenology in the Pope’s statement on evolution. The phenomenological and intentional character of thought is impossible to relate to the dynamic and extensional categories of science and thus it is difficult to relate the mind to the brain. Some vehemently dispute the idea that mind cannot either be reduced to or explained away by the physical features of the brain. For now, I only point the reader to the intractability of the debate over this even among philosophers with no theistic ax to grind.

This means that while science can tell us that there are likely to be 250K original samples of the Hunan species, it may not in principle tell us about whether or not they were “minded”. No doubt that sounds implausible since just as we would assume that as a member of a species, a feature of a zebra will also be true of many other zebras, then a feature of a human will likely be true of other humans. And since the other humans of our acquaintance have minds so did all the original ones.

But having a mind is not a typical feature. One of the features of the mystery of mind and brain is the emergence of an agent mind from non-minded animals in evolutionary history. Again the categories seem to make difficult any gradualist account of the emergence of mind. Suppose that God exists and set the initial conditions of the universe to arrange a point in evolution to produce a myriad of human species to make the result more likely that one of them would become minded.

So it’s not epistemically impossible that there is only one Adam given the limits to the categories of science. It’s important to see that this is not merely a lack of data but based on a principle limitation to our inquiries.

In conclusion, science is not able to rule out the possibility of a first minded human who stands apart from an unawakened human herd, and this is because of the natural limits of empirical science.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Holy Spirit!!!

There are two kinds of kids that don’t get any toys from Santa on Christmas and they are not necessarily excluded from each other. One kind are kids who are bad, who don’t pick up their toys or do what their loving parents tell them to do. You only get toys if you are a good kid.

The other kind are kids who don’t believe in Santa which means they don’t expect Santa to do any good for them like give them toys. They will manage without Santa’s toys. But as you can imagine, it is often because bad kids are bad and don’t expect toys for being good so they excuse their disappointment by refusing to be taken in by belief in Santa.

Now the reason bad and/or unbelieving children do not get toys is not because Santa is some magical law or mysterious fairy compound that fails to work unless the brain chemistry of kids is balanced in a certain way. Santa is not some impersonal principle that has not been activated to get the desired result. The reason bad and unbelieving kids don’t get presents from him is precisely because Santa is a person. Santa’s actions are reasonable for one who wants to do good but not to reward evil or to those who refuse it. Further, not only is Santa a person but Santa is also the one taking the initiative. The presents that good children receive are not entitlements but remain gifts.

Santa is s myth and the Holy Spirit is not. But Santa is misunderstood by bad kids in the same way the work of the Holy Spirit is misunderstood by defeated Christians.

One of the great blessings of salvation according to the message of the apostles about Jesus is that those who hear and receive the Good News about Christ is that they are said to be sealed with the Holy Spirit and that this sealing preserves them as Christ’s for all eternity. The Holy Spirit is the Agent of Divine life on the life of the believer not just at the resurrection of the dead but even now while they live. He is the real basis for the believer’s union with Christ.

One of the blessings that comes with this real union is the growth of Christian virtues as the Fruit of the Spirit. Yet because these blessings are said to be secured and because sinfulness is never perfectly removed in life, Christians tend to think about this in naturalistic and physicalistic ways as if this was an automatic process, sort of like a fuel pump of the soul. But this distorts their expectations and they come to doubt when they don’t spiritual growth increasing by some identifiable formula.

But this forgets that the Holy Spirit is not a thing or a law or a stuff. The Spirit is a person – Divine Person in Communion with the Trinity from all eternity who covenanted with the Father and Son to deliver the Christian’s life.

The security of the Holy Spirit’s life giving work is not secured as a law but as a gift secured through a promise. The Spirit cannot by shut off or fail to activate. But He can be grieved and quenched.

He is grieved by our continuing in sin and our neglect of our character. When we try to ignore our sins or try to deny how sin deceives us it is not surprising that we don’t see progress in our life.

The Spirit is quenched when we stop trusting in Him to be our seal. When our prayer is cold or flippant or when we neglect to pray or worship or give or serve or in any other way fail to show our gratitude or trust, we cannot be surprised by our lack of progress in the Christian life.

So we discover that the “secret” to the fruitful Christian life is to neither grieve nor quench the Spirit, that is to keep turning from sin and trusting in God’s promises. The conditions for continuing in the Christian life are the same as the conditions for beginning the Christian life; repentance and faith. But this is no growth that we credit to ourselves but is only made true in our lives by the gift of the Spirit.

So just as we can understand how good and expectant kids can look forward to presents from Santa, we can also understand how Christians who trust and obey can expect fruit from the Spirt. Yes, Virginia, there is a Holy Spirit!!!

The Psuedo-Conscience of Modernity

The Psuedo-Conscience of Modernity

Today I had breakfast at my favorite vegan cafe – I’m not vegan but the food is good – where I was confronted with anti-cruelty arguments in pamphlets for veganism. The moral certainty that attaches to such arguments is so alien to the secularity underneath them. The fact that hedonism is the real principle is obscured by the Puritanism of the histrionics stating the view. That such hedonism is morally dubious does not seem to enter the mind.

Further, a friend just reported that the American Philosophical Society has politicized their policies against schools that require traditional morals about marriage, life, and family, in the name of defending previously unheard of civil rights. Again, a new kind of Puritanism that is centered on the premise if hedonism seems behind it.

In our present day, it seems that we see a new Victorianism, where the authority of a public conscience has become sacrosanct. But this authority of conscience is absurd given the account that modernity gives us about conscience.

Both traditional and modern accounts agree that the formation of conscience is like the formation of a habit. It grows and develops according to reinforcement which comes through custom and training. However, the modern view argues that this is all there is to it and that the impression that we have that we are obliged to follow duties immediately recognized by intuitions is an illusion created by the reinforcement of what were originally merely hypothetical imperatives but which had become second nature to social custom before we were born into it. Consequently, we no longer are aware of their rationale but are still aware of their imperative force. So we construe it as a basic duty.

Be that as it may. It may well be true that intuited obligations were originally hypothetical imperatives. Still, the epistemological foundation of such an analysis – some version or another of the Verification Principle – is famously self defeating. If we grant that we know anything at all, then there may be most anything that could be a basic belief – including basic moral beliefs. These may even be hypothetical imperatives but ones the that realize an objective good or end to human nature whether individually or socially. These original intuitions would not just be customary. They would be constitutive of the proper functioning of human nature.

A way of trying to grasp what this original moral information wired into nature might be, one might seek to describe the way humans actually make moral judgments in the world. It’s here that the thesis of descriptive moral relativism is given – that different cultured hold different duties as valid than other cultures do. However, this picture is richer than is often presented. Fundamental moral codes and moral decision procedures have more in common across different cultures than first appears. The picture is consistent with a moderate moral objectivism that affirms that different codes aim to recognize objective moral truths from the perspective of their own concrete situations – and sometimes they make mistakes.

However, modernity, once it accepts that conscience is purely epiphenomenal to nature, goes about to rescript in totum according to one ideal theory or another, similar to the attempt to rewrite language into a more pure ideal or scientific form. Such extremity can only be a risky experiment. The result is, by it’s own lights, a radically altered conscience that has also lost sight of the experimental riskiness of it’s project and the cost of what might have been the natural basis of the moral life.

Besides this Cartesian-like radical replacement of our previous formal frameworks, there is the implication that conventional morality is neither necessary nor obligatory but neither is any alternative morality. The wedding of Nietzsche with Mill underneath the mask of the mechanism of conscience shows that modern morality is just a bid for power by the alert morality brokers over those who simply conform to conscience. But for all they know, the sheep may just be the beneficiaries of a kind of induced moral psychosis that both stands as moral truth for them and between them and moral truth.

But to those who bank on the possibility of moral truth will be sensitive to the history and demographics of traditions of moral thought and only change as necessary – rejecting Cartesian remove and replacement for the example of Nurath’s boat, fixing leaks by moving boards around whole staying at sea. Such an exploration of tradition will be for them a standpoint that will enable them to see through the power games of modern Victorianism. Rather than moral tradition representing a moral monstrosity, it may be the only cure for a generation where everyone is a moral monster.

The End of America

Suppose you had a successful research program in science. Let’s say such a program would involve certain assumptions which make up the non-negotiable core that possible methods, paradigm examples, and hypotheses have to be consistent with, a body of work that in various ways positively contributed to the fecundity of the program, and a fairly nominal amount of ad hoc bootstrapping to cope with counter-examples to research. Such a program would appear to be fairly praised and it’s legitimacy in continuing would be very strong.

But then suppose that a set of assumptions came to be wide spread among socially established groups with in the society of the sciences. And suppose these assumptions came to be accepted as established without any real successful research and supported with an abundance of ad hoc moves, even going so far as to be proclaimed in cliches that do the thinking for the scientists. Then supposes that the assumptions of this bastard program logically excluded some of the assumptions of the fruitful program.

It’s conceivable that the fruitful program will be set aside on no other grounds but that it is logically excluded by the bastard program. The fruitfulness would not play a role in the consideration. The fruitful program simple comes to a stop, solely on the grounds of preference. It would another instance of the fable of the goose that laid the golden eggs.

I think that we have something like this now with the great American Experiment and the common sense empiricism behind it’s institutions, it’s economy, and it’s pluralism and so on. Because of it’s foundational arguments, America went from a colonial agrarian republics to a world commercial power while elevating and preserving one of the highest domestic standards in history. But now it is being set aside by a national socialist regime alien to America’s founding presuppositions and which in the experience of other countries has proven to have a track record that descends from onerous to murderous.

The main objection to American flourishing is the forced false dilemma of either being a member of the herd or being the creative cultural pioneer. This overlooks the logical hierarchy of storied that span from low to high adventure that are written by many Americans, especially the story of the Immigrant and the Entrepreneur. America is the land of freedom, equality, and opportunity, the great American Narrative, even though it is mixed with personal irresponsibility or bad luck, two things you can only mitigate and not eliminate.

It is just foolish to will the end of America on such grounds. And cruel.

Psychological Egoism and the Debate on Homosexuality

One of the great mysteries in the public debate over homosexuality is the widespread acceptance of genetic determinism argument for homosexuality — a homosexual simple cannot help themselves so they cannot be obliged not to be gay. the religious spin on this is that since it’s genetic, it must be considered God’s gift and will for that person — and you can’t go against God. The mystery of this is that there is no evidence at all that genetics plays a significant role but plenty of evidence that a convergent set of certain types of environmental factors over the course of a person’s development from pre-natal to childhood to adulthood can induce an intransigent homosexual orientation – a case such that as a child the person is helpless to do anything about and for which he cannot be held responsible for its origin but which is something he can start to deal with as an adult and the prevention of which is something the community can control and prevent for the children.

But a better explanation is that the genetic argument is just an archetype of legitimacy that characterizes the worldview of the age and reduces it to a cliche that does our thinking for us. The real point is the socially settled view that humans have evolved from nothing but natural causes, thus their behavior is determined in all cases. Also, human behavior is necessarily egoistic and hedonistic, focused only on the basic instincts for survival and pleasure in common with other animals. Consequently, no one can behave in any other way that to seek these and that no matter how things appear otherwise. One might object that if this were true how could we have ever come by our intuitions about morality or our great moral institutions. The answer given is that these formed over the course of time as a kind of cultural evolution. Practices which had value at the time for encouraging survival against hostile forces and which were reinforced by repetition to become habits. As habits they continued to be observed even when the original motives for introducing them ceased to exist. When asked about them now, we no longer see how it came to be that we observed such customs, although we still feel the note of approval and disapproval about following or failing to follow them. We thus take them to basic intuitions of moral truth, even though they are just detritus from previous circumstances. Thus the Voice of God in the Soul turns out just to be a shadow of our evolutionary history.

But once this has been dispelled by scientific discovery that needs neither God nor morals to play a role in explanation, we now see that there could not be any possible moral grounds to base a rejection of homosexuality. Further since as a survival driven organism humans must necessarily seek themselves, they could not be obliged to do otherwise. This means that is we are to speak of moral categories at all we must speak of a right to pursue ones own satisfaction as one sees fit. Finally, one one says for whatever reason that someone cannot enjoy their homosexual lifestyle, that denies them a pleasure they desperately desire and also adds the pain of being shamefully regarded. Since hedonism is also hardwired in the species, the cannot be obliged to accept this misery.

As this account came to be developed, starting with the advent of early modern thought’s adoption of nominalism and its denial of formal and final causes, it was thought that (or at least presented as if) these ideals would be no threat to conventional morality. But history has shown us that once natural teleology has been rejected, panmaterialism erodes the conventional codes progressively. The shift in perspective from Aristotelianism to Corpuscularianism in the 17th Century has undercut the foundations of traditional morality, but not all at once. But the history of modern western thought has been the progress of the acceptance of one previously unthinkable conclusion after another so that now what has become unthinkable is morality or justice in the traditional sense.

So the genetic argument is only an ectype for the real argument and the grip it has especially on the rising generation is that we have crossed another threshold of unthinkability. The problem with it is that this explanation does not adequately explain the experience we all have of moral reflection. In deciding what the right thing to do in a situation, and especially in situations when we are faced with conflicting moral demands, we have the capacity to reason from moral intuitions to novel applications which being situation based are necessarily new but also seen to be sound. We are also able to discern exception cases that enable us to distinguish actual duties from merely prima facie dutiesAlso beside the ability to deliberate with these principles , we also see an appropriate emotional response of approval, disaproval, shame, or guilt – including the difference between moral guilt and just regret for getting discovered – and that the fitness between the two is logical. If our intuitions were simple de facto affirmations that have passed there sell-by date, we shouldn’t expect this to be the case. But if they are genuine intuitions of moral reasoning along with their appropriate feelings, then it is odd that such should emerge from the flux of cultural evolution alone. I can give real and valid assent to the idea that I am guilty of wrongdoing, which suggests less an old piece of doctrine and more a Voice speaking to me about my conduct.

Campaign Notes from ARCON

Shaolin Samurai

Here is the story from our Shadows of Syracuse adventure held at ARCON XI by the StoryTellers’ Guild at SUNY Oswego the last weekend of April, 2012. It was based on my home brewed noir urban fantasy hero setting “Shadows of Syracuse: Wonder Tales from the distant Present”. This year, I used the rediscovered hero system “Villains & Vigilantes” to create some of the old school feel to the game.

Syracuse is an old upstate city struggling with expanding crime and a poor economy, with strong ethnic neighborhoods. Unaware to most of it’s citizens, it is also at the intersection of the Five Mystical Circles of Power, the resident base of the estranged members of the Imperial Family of the Galactic Empire, and Ground Zero of the coming Apocalypse – the true center of the Universe. Several citizens have in various ways been touched by these forces and have received hyper-natural or supernatural powers. But this has cast them from the full light of day and made them targets of even greater forces they do not fully understand. They must try to carve their own way in the hidden recesses of the enchanted city.

This often means privateering for the various factions working to manipulate the direction of these forces. Our touched characters, natural born citizens who have received powers, have been recruited by Catholic Charities: Special Lichtensteinian Refugee Services Branch: (LRS) has contacted and called a meeting with them to help them with a serious internal matter. The archbishop in charge of the local organization cannot be it’s recognized authority unless he possesses the original charter document. But during the last transition of power, an agent of Destiny Corps. and one of it’s Corporate Ninjas (not a metaphor) has stolen the document and hid, to gain control over the LRS “assets”. The intended successor has been de facto regent secretary but cannot rule fully. Only recently, by recovering one of the other victims of the Villain, have they been able to find where he is. However, he has picked a particularly reinforced place to protect himself – the Hotel Syracuse. A landmark of the city, the Great Hotel has seen hard times in recent years. Guests who stayed during the NCAA tournament complained of yellowing sheets and “a strange smell”. Businesses in the ground floor have closed their shops and the property has been purchased by an Israeli interest. But the word in the Shadows is that some dark force has claimed hold of the building and scared away all the normal customers and that these other interests are seeking to contain the dark.

The only person to come out from that darkness is this recovered hostage. But she seems to have “Stockholm Syndrome”. She is desperate to return to her former captor. So the plan is for our heroes to follow her lead back to the Ninja, defeat him, and recover the charter.

In late evening, she directs the group to enter the service entrance on the far side of the hotel front. Showing them a secret stairway, they descend steps to a sub- sub- sub- basement. This chamber seems more like a natural cave formation than a human structure, except the walls are covered of a strange crystalline material, “Watch your step. This is very slippery” the hostage says. Exploring reveals a few passages away from the main chamber but they arc dangerously down into deeper caves. The heroes decide not to go further. In the center of the chamber is an elevator shaft with an old elevator car from the early years of the hotel. After debating various strategies, the heroes decide to just take the car up. The hostage reveals a secret key which she inserts in a hidden keyhole which activates the car.

The heroes get the distinct impression that the car is going up higher than the actual height of the building. The car stops in the service corridor in he center of what looks like a typical floor of the hotel. The heroes have maps of standard floor plans from the public library. The other elevator shafts are sealed in concrete and useless. The hostage warns that some areas have been damaged by collapsed structure and some have been sealed off. But the way to her “dear one” should be accessible. The elevator does not go all the way up. They have to find the stairs to the upper level.

There are only three stairwells and the one in the service area is completely sealed up. The heroes then step into the elevator lobby. One of them. Using his magnetic power, opens all the room doors to insect the rooms. Contrary to the map, it appears that the hallways extend indefinitely long in opposite directions. Looking for an open stairwell, the heroes go in one direction and discover that this appearance is an illusion created by mirrors that block the way to the stairs. Using incorporeality, one hero passes through the mirror and peels off strips of the backing so all can see through the glass. He also discovers that the second stairwell is completely caved in.

He and another hero, looking through the glass, sense danger and see something at the end of the corridor – a pair of children in nightshirts. Suddenly, the group discovers that they are surrounded by the Hungry Dead – former guests of the hotel who died there but have come alive as hungry ghosts. First the group tries to fight them. At this time, one hero reveals her pet – an invisible “phase ape” – she named him “Fluffles” – that came with the cache of alien tech that she discovered in her uncle’s pawn shop. The ape allows her to attack remotely and gain a facing advantage. Another, using magnetism, is hitting the ghosts with hotel doorknobs. However, more ghosts keep coming. Making agility saves, the group evades the ghosts and runs to the opposite side of the floor. One hero grabs the hostage and swings her onto his shoulder, taking out another of the Dead in the process. They find a similar mirror but this time with a secret door. Blasting a hole with a disintergrating ray through the mob of the Dead, they make it to the one maintained stairwell.

This takes them to a floor which hosts many dining rooms, meeting rooms, and a grand ball room. “That’s where he will be”, the hostage says. This floor is more damaged than the other. Caved in areas create a functioning maze trap. Eventually, in the master kitchen, one of heroes found materials to use as weapons with his magnetic power. Unfortunately, the also found a string tall figure with pale white skin and hair, black outfit, obsidian eyes, pointed ears and a broadswords the he welded as easily as a throwing knife – a genuine Drow Elf from the Unseali Courts of the Underdark. The only possible form of communication with him is through telepathy – which he invites since he is willing to parley. The hero who links with him is filled with dreadful images of the Underdark realm, including visions of caverns covered with a crystalline material like the basement. The heroes realize that the hotel has become touched from beneath by the Dark Fey realm and the taint of it has corrupted the building, bringing back the dead as hungry ghosts and who knows what else. The Drow sees the hotel as an extension of the Drow domain and demands tribute or he will not allow them to leave alive. The heroes shiver as it us clear to them that “tribute” means offering a human life to him. The elf allows them to contemplate their choice and leaves.

Moving this to the back of their minds, the heroes go next to the grand ball room. When the hostage sees her beloved she runs to him. He us also a powerful experience character with robes and a polearm. He is serene looking and glad to see them. He returns the expression of love from the hostage but in a more brotherly family way and not as a lover.

In response to questions, he explains that the former archbishop was murdered – not by him, a faithful disciple – but by the so-called successor who was the real agent from Destiny who disguised himself as a member of LRS from HQ to take over the organization. The former archbishop, before he died, entrusted him with the charter to prevent the complete transition of authority to the usurper. He has been holding on to the charter pending an appeal to HQ to rule on the matter and take care of it internally. The “hostage” was never her prisoner but was a member of a family that helped him hide from the usurper – which cost them dearly as many were killed helping him escape. She only survived. It was then he decided to take the risky measure of hiding in the “fortress” of the Hotel Syracuse, only letting her know how to find him in an emergency. He shows them the charter document. The heroes come to believe that they might have been used. He is, in fact, though Catholic, a very very eastern rite version. He us the Shaolin Samurai.

This gets confirmed when the “phase ape” appears to everyone, and then transforms into the usurper himself. Unknown to the hero, she was picked for this assignment to open the way for the usurper to face the Shaolin Samurai himself. The usurper, using his powers, killed and replaced Fluffles, to hide among the heroes. He then calls out. The windows of the great ball room smash as four gargoyles become animated from the roof of the hotel and come at the command of the usurper. Combat ensues.

The Shaolin Samurai and the incorporeal powered hero attack the usurper himself, while the others go after the gargoyles. The magnetic hero gets a lucky shot using the kitchen utensils like a billing ball picking up first strike like a seven ten split. one hero uses psychic force to pin two gargoyles to the wall while another blasts them with disintegration (getting a facing advantage from the pinning effect). Shaolin Samurai finds himself equally matched by his opponent getting no experience bonus to hit with his chi enhanced polearm attacks. Meanwhile, the incorporeal hero is able to take advantage of facing and incorporeality – which was a good thing because it prevented the usurper from using Touch of Death on him.

Eventually, the players succeed at their goal to kill all the gargoyles and wind and restrain the usurper using paralysis ray. Shaolin Samurai still holds the charter and is allowed to leave the hotel freely. The true usurper has been caught and given over to the Drow Elf as tribute – although no one can say if this “justice” was proportionate. The Shaolin Samurai promises the LRS will reward the heroes for their great service.

On the other hand, the loser is the “hostage” who finally realizes that the Shaolin Samurai is bound to an oath of chastity. He could never be hers. Also, mourned is Fluffles, the loss of whom will embitter her owner against Destiny Corp forever. And finally, there remains the yet unknown effect of the taint if the Dark Empire on our heroes.

GM notes: Total truth. V&V has “open powers” during character creation which simply ask the player or GM to come up with something under the general category. When this happened, I used the “Unlimited Powers” handbook from “Mutants & Masterminds” 2.0 for inspiration.

RIP, Fluffles. We hardly saw thee!

Bad Evangelical Luck

I arrived on the scene too late to fully participate in the Jesus People movement, but that, for all it’s dysfunction, left a legacy of great Christian music that got buried by CCM. What I did catch was the emphasis in the Evangelical Movement on Christianity as a world and life view, the idea that Christ was the center of every area of life and not confined to just an isolated religious aspect of life. I found that liberating and exciting, rather than the opposite. That became a leitmotif for my own life. Even though that idea has taken quite a beating, a chastened form of it still moves me greatly. 

But I am becoming more convinced that the plausibility of Christian faith has less and less to do with arguments and reasoning (although they remain indispensable) and more and more to do with trends that do not have anything intentionally to do with the reasonableness of faith and over which we have no real control in the short run. This illustrated by Charles Murray’s new book, “Coming Apart”.  The short version is that secularization created the welfare state and the welfare state then reinforced secularization. By creating incentives for delaying or avoiding work, marriage, and family, the practical need for religion also decreases. Furthermore, the impact of the history of ideas has dismissed the  philosophical foundations that make theism and ethics plausible and replaced them with sources of legitimacy at odds with the content of theology such as the esthetic, the technical, the beuracratic, and the therapeutic models of thinking. Because this is not an explicit process and because it does not affect all social classes to an equal degree, the church has for the most part simply assimilated these trends just like the rest of society. This can be seen in the turn away from denominational churches to mega-churches, moving away from ecclesial patterns of organization to bureaucratic, technique oriented ones following the new models of legitimacy. This meant abandoning the original establishments of Christianity in our culture and placing the church on the fringe of society as an elective network. The decline of the institutional church has been particularly damaging to those on the bottom, for whom there is no model of healthy discipline. 

Christianity has gone from being normal in our society to being abnormal, and the trend to simply dismiss or repel it is underway. Evidence from other societies, such as Sweden, suggests that once started it cannot be reversed. It can only be slowed in it’s forward motion. 

Our situation is similar to Judah’s in the books of the Kings. Once David had compromised his calling with Bathsheba, he set into motion a process of deterioration that lead to division and fall of his kingdom into exile. Even the Herculean efforts of Hezakiah and Joash to reverse the trend only succeeded in delaying the inevitable exile. 

Strikingly the great success of evangelicals breaking from their fundamentalist past and entering into academia may have done nothing to impact the social processes involved. It only fits the pattern of the smart getting smarter while the poor are getting poorer. 

Finally, even if there are more evangelicals in professional situations, they no longer “fit in the narrative” just as the loss of piety in the underclass outpacing that in the upperclass does not fit the narrative. Given that the “narrative” is a construct of the academy, and that the academy is an influential but sufficiently sized minority of opinion leaders, this also contributes to the weirdness of Christianity. The narrative goes hand in hand with the argument for the state subsidy establishment. It doesn’t matter that there are Ph.D.’s that do not accept the secularist interpretation of life. 

A friend warned me about providing what amounts to an argument for a conspiracy. My reply to such an objection made to this account is the same as Noam Chomsky’s.  This is institutional analysis, not a conspiracy theory. Today’s Christians and non-Christians may be said to have “Bad Religious Luck”.  From this point on, the church is now in a state of indefinitely perpetual culture shock in the West – Satan’s “little season”. 

In Support of Gay Marriage

On “gay marriage” – it may turn out, while I have been active, in such ways an ordinary citizen can be politically active in our society, for the defense of traditional marriage, that I may not be against gay marriage absolutely speaking. That is to say, that given the arguments I have been using, such as the argument from libertarianism below, there is a way of describing gay marriage such that I wouldn’t be against it’s legalization. The clue to that description is based on this post at the Volokh Conspiracy blog. 

http://volokh.com/2012/02/10/on-same-sex-marriage-and-sex-discrimination/

Caution: my take on this may not be quite the same as the author’s. 

The example is based on a “just so” story about the origin of Bat Mitzvah. In Judaism, the central importance of the Bar Mitzvah in the tradition fixes the fact that only boys, not girls, can receive it. However, for families who want to have something in parity or near parity for girls as well as boys. They thus contrive a Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Whatever this does for girls and their families, it remains clear that the ceremony is not and cannot be willed to be a true Bar Mitzvah. Some may be content with that. Others may insist that their girl gets an original Bar Mitzvah. But of course, this is impossible since discrimination by male sex is essential to the rite. To require the rite to change would be to war against the tradition. 

In this example, gay marriage is to traditional marriage as Bat Mitzvahs are to Bar Mitzvahs. Tradition (and I would add together with nature) fixes the meaning of marriage as only possible between a man and a woman and thus inherently discriminates on the basis of nature. But gay marriage acknowledges this yet creates this contrived rite to mend the harm of such discrimination being confused with discrimination not based on relevant facts, and to derive some sense of the dignity of the original to the benefit of those who are not able to appropriate it normally. In this sense, gay marriage, like Bat Mitzvah, is conscious of it’s contrived nature vis a vis it’s original and the derived nature of it’s value. The original has it’s value intrinsically or by being instrumental to some other intrinsic value defined by the tradition (or both). The contrived ceremony is instrumental to an alternative value chosen by the participants. 

Such a conception of gay marriage would clearly distinguish itself from traditional marriage but also preserve the meaning of traditional marriage as the prior and paradigmatic sense by which we understand the sense of the derivative rite of gay marriage. So rather than threatening or de-valuing traditional marriage, it would presuppose it and preserve it. 

It would also do much of what is legitimate in the concerns of gay marriage. It would embody and expand on all the rights to freedom of association and contracting that gays have in common with everyone else. It would make a return to anti-sodomy law impossible or at least difficult to legally justify. Finally, thinking of gay marriage this way would certainly protect those gays who are only concerned about such things but it would also perhaps answer to such gays who also realize that there is necessarily some things about traditional marriage that gay marriage cannot capture but that gay marriage can bring some of the gravitas of commitment in marriage to the edification of those for whom traditional marriage is simply not emotionally available. 

This way of looking at gay marriage also brings light on those who would attempt some kind of overreach against traditional marriage. They would appear odd in the same way that a girl insisting on a Bar Mitzvah would appear odd. Such would be the case of someone insisting that gays get a traditional marriage or that a gay marriage must be considered identical in kind (and not just in parity of legal status) to traditional marriage or it’s not “really” marriage. The motive may be that there will still remain the suspicion of a stigma to gay marriage. But it would be clear that this would invoke the Humpty Dumpty approach to semantics of marriage which will not change people’s opinions of gay marriage, except in some Orwellian way. 

On this description of gay marriage, like Bat Mitzvah, the spooky quotes remain there but tacitly. It’s clear that traditional marriage has entailments that gay marriage does not (such as “being able to consummate”) and vica versa. It is also clear that people do not a fundamental right to gay marriage, since gay marriage does not contribute to the perpetuity of the community is the same direct way as traditional marriage, but reflection may determine that gays have a derived right to have a gay marriage as an application of the defeasible principles of beneficence or at least non-malfeasance. 

If gay marriage is understood under this description, then I do not object to it being made a legally available option. My interest is in protecting traditional marriage from cultural warfare through law. It is not my interest to legally force people who don’t share my values to live by them. But traditional marriage is an institution with a specific sense and a subjective value. I think that this way of understanding gay marriage preserves both sets of interests.  

Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man

W. Wynn Kenyon, professor of Bible, Theology, and Philosophy at Belhaven University, went to be with Jesus this last week.  He was my professor at the end of the 1980′s when Belhaven was still a college.  I had attempted college before and couldn’t manage it, going for years without a degree.  I served in the US Air Force to save money to pay off the old college debt and start again.  The USAF had brought me to the South and gave me time to understand myself better as a believer.  I had read a lot of theology and philosophy but had been tempted into an apologetic fad.  When I finished my term of service I wanted to go back and finish.  I knew I wanted to go into a school that embraced my distinctive brand of doctrine, but was also affordable and would let me finish in my major.  The only thing left to do was work on a minor and I decided to make my minor philosophy to sort out my head.

After taking six months to adjust to civilian life again, I wrote to certain colleges.  Unlike other schools, Belhaven had professors cold call me.  Since I had put down an interest in a philosophy minor, I received a call from one Wynn Kenyon, the one phil prof at the school.  Even though it was a cold call, Wynn challenged me through questioning when he discovered my philosophical inclinations.  I found out that he was a personal disciple of one of the leading thinkers of the school rival to my own chosen school of thought.  However, we found common ground in both liking a then recently published book, “Allen Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind”.

That call was the beginning of a long and meaningful friendship with the man.  he was very much my mentor and we stayed in contact all those years until now, at least by phone.  But I was not unique in that respect as many students of his would enjoy is generous attention over his whole career.  He was a most beloved teacher.

Wynn came from a very large extended family from the heart of Western Pennsylvania and his father and grandfather were both ministers.  He was originally on plan to be in the ministry himself until he came to loggerheads with his denomination over his views about woman’s ordination in a case that became a watershed for the future of the denomination, and his one piece of notoriety as the named in “The Kenyon Case”.  Having been stalled in the ministry he chose to go on into philosophy and education, getting his doctorate at University of Miami, FL.  He then settled into his first job at Belhaven college and stayed for decades until the end.

Wynn was a student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, a mainline liberal seminary but one which still had Dr. John Gerstner as a professor, a godly man (who I met through Wynn) who was widely loved by the regional Presbyterian Churches and a scholar of Jonathan Edwards.  Gerstner and Wynn bonded at a time when the Vietnam War was going on and many were joining seminary to avoid the draft.  Wynn showed me a cartoon a seminarian had made for the school newsletter about a theological appointment the school made, a woman professor who did not accept the deity of Christ.  The cartoon shows Gerstner in full Grand Inquisitor garb surrounded by his favorites, including Wynn, who is drawn saying “Hang the Witch”.  Wynn told me that he was once called into the president’s office.  The president assured him that the school still proudly stood in the Reformed tradition.  Wynn replied, “Suppose I was once a John Birch Society member but had come around to becoming a Marxist, yet I still assured everyone that I proudly stood in the John Birch Tradition”.

Many others were blessed by Gerstner’s oversight, including R. C. Sproul of Ligonier (Renewing Your Mind) Ministries.  But Wynn was a quieter influence and was not in a hurry to dismiss the old church that dismissed him.  But he finally did change his membership when he thought that he erred too much on the side of giving the church the benefit of the doubt (soon after Gerstner himself came to the same conclusion).

Wynn was beloved for his greatness of spirit and genuine compassion.  He was working enormous course loads at Belhaven that would shame the average unionized teacher in a university today but he also had great emotional capacity for individual students.  His Miami dissertation was on the ontological argument and unfortunately that and a few devotional bits are all his published work.  Like so many other intellectual greats, the fruit of his intellectual labors was in effect reserved for his students.  Hopefully the distinctive Wynn brand of scholarship will make itself felt on the world of theology and philosophy.

Ligon Duncan of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi has given a memorial sermon at the Belhaven University Chapel that cannot be improved upon,  so I won’t try.  I will remember that precious truth that sometimes Christ withholds his healing power to show His glory more greatly, and that in his glory we find our joy.  But for the moment, the world is a colder  and more dim place without Wynn in it.  Like the soldier in “Saving Private Ryan”, I have to come to grips with my failure to realize the potentials and gratitude I have received from such a rare gift as the time I have spent with Wynn Kenyon.