I used to think that a successful life was available to anyone in this country who was willing to work hard, and if someone didn't succeed, it was his- or her own fault for making bad choices. But over the years I've seen how not everyone gets dealt as good a hand as I was, starting with one's "choices" of parents and upbringing. I've also seen how sometimes basically-good people can experience disappointments and even disasters that seemed hardly their fault, if at all. "Suck it up and accept your fate" is not an especially-satisfying response — particularly since evolution has programmed all of us higher-order animals to want what we see that others have (arguably, such programming is largely responsible for all human progress).
I've come to appreciate the wisdom of John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" in his book A Theory of Justice: We should try to set up our basic societal arrangements as though we didn't know what "ticket" we'd be handed in life's lottery. One simple example is the kids' technique for sharing a big cookie: You cut, but then I choose (which goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis, as it turns out). To quote the Wikipedia article: "For example, in the imaginary society, one might or might not be intelligent, rich, or born into a preferred class. Since one may occupy any position in the society once the veil is lifted, the device forces the parties to consider society from the perspective of all members, including the worst-off and best-off members." The same article notes that "if [slave-owners] were forced through the veil of ignorance to imagine that they themselves may be slaves, then suddenly slavery may no longer seem justifiable."
Crispin Sartwell has a piece in the NY Times: What's So Good About Original Sin? He says, "I would like to entertain the notion that a secularized conception of original sin is plausible, and that believing it might have good effects. In short, perhaps it’s time for a new Puritanism, though with fewer witch trials this time around."
I wonder if this philosophy professor has any familiarity with evolutionary psychology. Yes, as Paul said in Romans, we do things we hate and we don't do things we want. But original sin seems a less plausible explanation than natural selection of variations. To borrow from Jesse Jackson: In "his" continuing creation, God simply isn't finished with us yet.
[NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof:] "In previous Q. & A.’s, I asked [Presbyterian] Rev. Tim Keller and [Baptist] President Jimmy Carter whether a skeptic like myself, who admires Jesus’ moral teachings but doubts the virgin birth and any physical resurrection, counts as a Christian. Basically, Keller said 'no,' and Carter 'yes,' so you’re the tiebreaker. Am I a Christian?"
[Joseph Cardinal Tobin:] "I would think that if you haven’t completely closed the door on the possibility that God has more to say to you, then I think you’re in the tent.
In a Facebook thread, a conservative friend writes: "And yet, those economies where it was 'sink or swim' have thrived throughout history (in contradiction to those that were socialist)." I moved my response here.
That's an oversimplification. Sink or swim does provide a certain motivation, but humans generally aren't willing to just let others sink, even when the others' problems are their own "fault."
That's why we have laws requiring hospitals to treat emergency cases, even when the patients should have bought health insurance. That's why we have food stamps.
For that matter, that's why first responders and volunteers risk their lives to rescue people from their Harvey-flooded homes and streets, even though those people had [fouled] up by ignoring earlier warnings to evacuate.
We simply don't understand human psychology as well as we need to. In particular, we haven't developed a broadly-accepted, tested, general theory about what it takes to promote socially-desirable behavior.
Sure, we have various notions along those lines. A lot of those notions, though, are no more evidence-based than, say, bleeding a feverish patient to (supposedly) reduce the fever, as physicians used to do centuries ago.
In that vein, I thought this Kristof piece from a couple of months ago was quite thought-provoking:
... Consider baseball: Some teams pay players much more disparately than others do, and one might think that pay inequality creates incentives for better performance and more wins.
In fact, economists have crunched the data and found the opposite is true. Teams with greater equality did much better, perhaps because they were more cohesive.
What’s more, it turned out that even the stars did better when they were on teams with flatter pay. "Higher inequality seemed to undercut the superstar players it was meant to incentivize, which is what you would expect if you believed that the chief effect of pay inequality was to reduce cooperation and team cohesion," Payne notes.
Nicholas Kristof, What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness (NYTimes.com June 3, 2017) (emphasis added).
This lack of a true understanding of human motivation, and how to apply that understanding to motivate "useful" behavior, is the basis of a lot of political disagreement. For example:
In sum: We just don't know where the sweet spot is for getting people to do useful things. Hell, we don't even agree that much on what we mean by "useful." And in any case, the sweet spot is likely to move around over time, just as weather patterns do.
The best we can do, I submit, is to stay focused on seeking the best for others as we do for ourselves, and to face the facts as they are revealed to us.
Here's a comment from a reader, who prefers to remain anonymous but who has approved my posting this. Boldfaced emphasis is mine, and I've added some extra paragraphing.
I came across your Blog this weekend and find it very refreshing and informative. You have addressed many of my doubts and concerns about the mainstream Church's doctrine that I have been either too afraid, or insufficiently knowledgeable to answer on my own. For this I am indebted to you.
Today I was reading through your essays on the Resurrection - an event which I have never been able to accept as being literally true, based solely on my gut feeling that 'if it doesn't make sense, it probably didn't happen'.
Your alternate explanations have resonated with what I was unable to clearly formulate on my own, the feeling that it just didn't fly. (Sidebar: I'm not an attorney but I have spent most of the past 40 years in the field of video surveillance and intelligence gathering. One develops a sort of Jedi ability to separate fact from fiction)
I wonder if you have considered a third possible explanation of the Resurrection story? That is, that when Jesus was removed from the cross he was actually still alive. Barely, of course, and in critical condition, but to all outward appearances (and given the level of medical knowledge available at the time) he was thought to be deceased.
Figuring this option into your description of Joseph of Arimathea removing Jesus from the tomb, perhaps he, Joseph, discovered Jesus to be still alive and took him to a secret location where he could receive some healing and be safe from discovery. Maybe through God's intervention he recovered - and this would account for subsequent 'appearances' to his followers after a period of time. Obviously he would know that it would be unwise to stick around, and would have made his escape into obscurity.
Am I right in thinking he remained on the Cross for only a few hours, due mainly to the approaching Sabbath, and could conceivable have survived? And the fact that Joseph whisked him away so quickly may also have been because he felt there was a chance Jesus wasn't dead?
My response, slightly edited:
Thanks for reaching out, [NAME]. Nearly all of your conjecture about Jesus' being taken off the cross barely alive and then "escaping into obscurity," as you put it, is certainly more plausible than either (i) the conventional orthodox narrative, or (ii) Hugh Schonfield's The Passover Plot, which always struck me as far-fetched.I'm intrigued by your idea that a recovered Jesus, after the scare of his near-death experience, might well have changed his mind about trying to overthrow Israel's oppressors and usher in God's reign. In that scenario, though, we'd still have to account for Jesus' brother James' being part of the early church; this would presuppose that Jesus didn't simply go back to his old life in Nazareth, but instead abandoned his family and effectively disappeared. That makes me lean more toward the notion that Jesus simply died and was secretly buried.Sadly, we're not likely ever to know the truth (unless Benjamin Franklin was correct).
I'd always accepted the assumption that a certain level of inequality was good for society because it helps to motivate less-well-off individuals to get busy and up their game. But studies seem to suggest that the "machinery" of a sports team, a company, a community, etc., can be thrown out of whack by too much inequality. It sounds like the way that the machinery of the human body can be thrown out of whack by too much salt, too much vitamin D, etc.
Here's an excerpt from a June 5 piece on this subject in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristof, What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness:
... Consider baseball: Some teams pay players much more disparately than others do, and one might think that pay inequality creates incentives for better performance and more wins.
In fact, economists have crunched the data and found the opposite is true. Teams with greater equality did much better, perhaps because they were more cohesive.
What’s more, it turned out that even the stars did better when they were on teams with flatter pay. "Higher inequality seemed to undercut the superstar players it was meant to incentivize, which is what you would expect if you believed that the chief effect of pay inequality was to reduce cooperation and team cohesion," Payne notes.
This might well raise doubts whether laissez-faire, libertarian, free-market economics is really the best way to promote human progress.
Think about what happened the last time you took a breath, and consider the cosmic machinery that made it possible:
So let's sum up: We humans are part of a very-long-term process by which the energy from the Big Bang is being busily transformed into an ever-evolving universe.
If we wanted to speculate, we might even call this process a project — a continuing creation — in which we get to participate.
(Inspired by an NPR commentary yesterday by astrophysicist Dr. Adam Frank reminding us of the wonder of photosynthesis.)
This seems like a long-term Good Thing: Chinese workers' expectations are rising, and so some Chinese manufacturers are starting to export their jobs to Africa, whose poorer workers can certainly use the income and a chance to get a foot on the economic ladder. Here's an excerpt from a NY Times report:
... Global brands flocked to China to tap into the country’s cheap and willing labor pool.
Today, Chinese workers are less cheap and less willing. More young people are going to college and want office jobs. The blue-collar work force is aging. Long workdays in a factory no longer appeal to those older workers, even with the promise of overtime pay.
* * *
Citing labor costs and the country’s foreign investment push, Huajian is building a sprawling complex of factories, office buildings and a hotel on the southern outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Mr. Zhang’s shoe factories there already have 5,000 employees. ...
(Keith Bradsher, Chinese Maker of Ivanka Trump’s Shoes Looks for Cheaper Labor, NY Times, June 1, 2017.)
A reader sent me an email this week, excerpted below:
... Today, I happily stumbled upon your blog via a web search regarding the possibility of being Christian while not believing in the divinity of Jesus. I have spent the past hour or so looking over your previous posts, and I am finding them most helpful in my current faith journey.
I particularly value your definition of faith as: (i) accepting that a Creator exists and (ii) trusting that, in the end, all will be well. This resonates deeply with me.
... I realize you have not posted much lately, but I hope you can assist me. Could you please recommend: 1) books that reflect your views on Christianity and faith, and 2) a good English translation of the Bible?
Dr. Atul Gawande is one of my heroes. His CalTech commencement address of yesterday should be required reading for any informed citizen of any country.
Excerpt:
If this place has done its job—and I suspect it has—you’re all scientists now. Sorry, English and history graduates, even you are, too.
Science is not a major or a career. It is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe through testing and factual observation.
[DCT comment: In other words, "science" is the practice of dealing with the universe as it is — or in another formulation: as the Creator wrought it — and not as necessarily being now what we wish it were.]
The thing is, that [the scientific mindset] isn’t a normal way of thinking. It is unnatural and counterintuitive. It has to be learned. Scientific explanation stands in contrast to the wisdom of divinity and experience and common sense.
Common sense once told us that the sun moves across the sky and that being out in the cold produced colds. But a scientific mind recognized that these intuitions were only hypotheses. They had to be tested.
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)
The determinist viewpoint recounted in this article seems like unwarranted either-or binary thinking. That view appears to posit that either we're totally in control of ourselves, or we have no control at all. I suspect that doesn't square with most people's personal experiences.
(Cf. Paul's letter to the Romans: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." Rom. 7.15)
One problem might lie in the nomenclature. The term "free will" is simply wrong. And it's not like "sunrise," which is likewise wrong but for everyday purposes the error is harmless.
(Article: Steven Cave, There's No Such Thing as Free Will, The Atlantic, June 2016.)
Like many people, I'm starting to really admire Pope Francis for his humility and simplicity. When I first heard that the new pope had chosen that name, I immediately thought of one of my all-time favorite novels, The Vicar of Christ, by Princeton professor Walter F. Murphy, published in 1978, which spent three months on the NY Times best-seller list. It's on the bookshelf directly behind me as I write this.
The protagonist is an American, Declan Patrick Walsh, the son of a career diplomat, Marine war hero (as was the author), and law professor. Walsh's unusual path to the papacy is imaginatively written but not implausible. As pope, he takes the name Francesco (after both Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, one of the first Jesuits), and emphasizes simplicity and helping the poor.
The New York Times's obituary of author Murphy quotes a Times reviewer: “If, to keep in touch, you require yourself to read at least one best-selling novel a year, ‘The Vicar of Christ’ is the one. It has the grace to click.”
Highly recommended.
Educational researchers have shown that telling teachers to change their expectations about particular students was not nearly as effective as training the teachers to change their own behavior towards the students — which led to just the changes in expectations that the researchers had hoped to see. See this NPR Morning Edition story by reporter Alix Spiegel. Money quote: "... to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors."
You've heard of word pictures? And you've seen those speeded-up videos of how a tall building or a ship is built? A piece in the online NY Times by history professor Christopher Phillips provides a vivid fast-motion "word movie" of how river transportation enabled the settlement of the American interior. It made me think of what it seems to be all about in our universe, in which we humans serve as created co-creators (to use Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner's phrase), helping in a titanic construction project.
At mass shootings, many people seem either to cower, not knowing what to do, or to flee. Apart from a few who courageously try to protect others, for many it's either deer in the headlights or sauve qui peut, every man for himself. We've seen this going back at least as early as the 1991 Luby's massacre in Killeen, Texas, in which 23 were killed (and the shooter killed himself), plus 20 wounded.
Cowering or fleeing is a natural human reaction. (In cold economic terms, fleeing may be the extreme case of the free-rider problem: Let someone else take care of the problem.)
But ask yourself: At the Aurora theater shooting, what would have happened if a crowd of moviegoers had immediately rushed the shooter, despite the obvious risk, because "that's what we do" for each other?
There's no denying that the shooter might well have shot one or more of his attackers. At the Luby's massacre, 71-year-old (!) Al Gratia rushed at the shooter and was fatally shot in the chest. (It's noteworthy that the selfless Gratia was a World War II veteran.)
But if lots of people had attacked at Luby's or at the Aurora theater, a lot of lives might have been saved:
And would the Aurora shooter have proceeded if he knew in advance that he was going to be immediately attacked by the crowd? He seems to have acted pretty "rationally," in a twisted sort of way. He had full body armor. He was well-armed. He had thought through his plan at least somewhat. If he had known that he was going to be immediately tackled by the crowd, he might have proceeded with his plan anyway — but maybe not.
That's why (it's been said) a 9/11-style airplane hjacking will never happen again: terrorists know that the passengers will rush and overpower the hijackers. The terrorists might be able to blow up the plane, or to crash it, but they won't be able to use it as a fuel-laden guided missile to kill thousands of others. Americans have learned from the heroic example of the passengers on United Flight 93, who stopped its hijackers from flying the plane into the White House or the Capitol. (Something similar actually occurred in the case of the shoe bomber, who was overpowered by flight attendants and passengers.)
Let's be clear about a couple of things here. First, I'm talking here about fighting back against a mass murderer like the guy in Aurora; I absolutely do not mean invoking a stand-your-ground law as an excuse to shoot somebody. Second, special cases exist: Let's say you're a parent with kids in tow (or in your arms); in that kind of situation, your first obligation is to protect your kids as best you can, and that will almost certainly call for a snap judgment call.
But otherwise, we Americans should commit ourselves to a higher standard: If, God forbid, we ever find ourselves in a mass-shooting situation, then we will attack, immediately — and trust that we won't be alone — because we owe that to each other. The Department of Homeland Security says that attacking the shooter should be a last resort, but I think that's backwards.
Would I personally react by rushing the shooter in an Aurora-type emergency? I wish I knew; I certainly hope so.
From a NY Times on-line piece about Jim Jones, who led some 900 followers to their deaths by cyanide suicide in Jonestown, Guyana:
Ms. O’Shea joined the Peoples Temple as a secretary in 1971, when she was 19. She said she eventually became Mr. Jones’s confidante and lover; “I thought he was God,” she said. “I thought God had picked me to be a mate.”
Um, not really ....
I'm beginning to be a fan of Dr. James McGrath. His recent post on the Christian Century blog, Inerrancy of the Bible and Sarah Palin, addressed those who would rewrite history when it doesn't fit their preconceived notions. He was on the money in this passage:
I suggested recently that one of the most fundamental elements of Christianity is repentance – acknowledging we were wrong and making efforts to be less wrong in the future. And one can see a faithful expression of this core Christian conviction in the history of Liberal Protestantism and its role in developing and embracing the tools of critical study of the Bible, and the integration of new scientific knowledge.
Admitting the Bible was wrong, admitting Jesus was wrong, when the evidence points in that direction, is not a denial of the Christian faith, but an expression of one of its most basic tenets: the fallibility of human beings and the resulting need to be open to correction.
(Links omitted.) I made a couple of comments in the discussion following his post.
It's been said that we're all entitled to our own opinions, but we're not entitled to our own facts. Fidelity to the First Commandment dictates that we live in the world God wrought, not in a 'world' that we create in our imaginations -- and inerrantists of all kinds are guilty of violating that corollary.