The Questioning Christian

High-performing graduates may make better teachers

From Teach for America - New York Times:

... a new study from a federal research center based at the Urban Institute in Washington suggests that the country might raise student performance through programs like Teach for America, a nonprofit group that places high-achieving college graduates in schools that are hard to staff. ... ¶ ...

... The results suggest that states that want students to do better in math and science need to focus recruitment on more selective colleges instead of on traditional teacher education programs, which are often little more than diploma mills.

Immigrant assimilation: Watch the trend, not just the snapshot

From Jason Riley, Keep the Immigrants, Deport the Multiculturalists - WSJ.com (May 15, 2008, p. A17):

... Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, calls it the "Peter Pan Fallacy." "Many of us assume, unwittingly, that immigrants are like Peter Pan," says Mr. Myers, "forever frozen in their status as newcomers, never aging, never advancing economically, and never assimilating." * * *

With respect to linguistic assimilation, which is one of the more important measures because it amounts to a job skill that can increase earnings, the historical pattern is as follows: The first generation learns enough English to get by but prefers the mother tongue. The children of immigrants born here grow up in homes where they understand the mother tongue to some extent and may speak it, but they prefer English. When those children become adults, they establish homes where English is the dominant language.

There's every indication that Latinos are following this pattern.

John McCain and Jesus

From Steven Waldman, Political Perceptions : The Religification of John McCain, in today's WSJ Online:

In the past, Sen. McCain has tended to emphasize a sense of duty as the key to his survival in Vietnam. "Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely, and who rely on you in return," he wrote. "A filthy, crippled, broken man, all I had left of my dignity was the faith of my fathers. It was enough."

(Emphasis added.) 

That pretty much sums up what I admire (and would hope to imitate) about Jesus of Nazareth.

Science undermines orthodoxy, not religion itself

"The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible." 

- David Brooks, The Neural Buddhists, NY Times, May 13, 2008.

Heresy is necessary in an ever-changing world

Dr. Stanley Aronson, dean of medicine emeritus at Brown University, points out that the world changes; that we don't know everything; and therefore all beliefs must be open to reexamination, so that we can determine which ones remain serviceable: 

[In a purely-imaginary idyllic world, b]eliefs are determined solely by consensus, by common sense and the evidence provided by one’s immediate senses. It is universally believed in this serene world that the sun rotates around the earth, that the major religious texts are inerrant, that professional athletes employ steroids only for post-retirement arthritis and that the moon is composed of Camembert cheese. ...  [In this world, e]motional peace becomes more important than anxiety or the corrosive knowledge of how little is known. Skepticism and curiosity become alien emotions.

The future, in such a pacific environment, would never be feared since the world will remain unchanged. Tomorrow, and all of the days that follow will be the same blissful Eden as yesterday or today. Ugliness, discord, contentiousness — and heresy — would remain as alien experiences confined to story books. And only the looming shadow of utter boredom would threaten this prospect of tranquility.

But imagine now, in this placid community, some rebellious individual, someone with the temerity to question the accepted beliefs of the majority, a person eager to assert that the ultimate enemy is not discord but ingrained bigotry and willful ignorance. The elders of this hypothetical community might initially condemn such a heretic, perhaps even destroy his spirit, but in their hearts they will know that all things but death change; that all beliefs must be tested continuously to determine which are false and which worthy and that it is the occasional heretic — with his provoking postulates — and not the peace-lover who brings progress and understanding to the community.

Read it all. (Hat tip: TitusOneNine; all emphasis added.)

Call your mother - Thomas L. Friedman

From Thomas L. Friedman, Call Your Mother - New York Times:

Whenever I’ve had the honor of giving a college graduation speech, I always try to end it with this story about the legendary University of Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant. Late in his career, after his mother had died, South Central Bell Telephone Company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial. As best I can piece together, the commercial was supposed to be very simple — just a little music and Coach Bryant saying in his tough voice: “Have you called your mama today?”

On the day of the filming, though, he decided to ad-lib something. He reportedly looked into the camera and said: “Have you called your mama today? I sure wish I could call mine.” That was how the commercial ran, and it got a huge response from audiences.

So on this Mother’s Day, if you take one thing away from this column, take this: Call your mother.

Immigration is our secret weapon - Josef Joffe

"China, Japan and Europe are aging rapidly; the United States will remain a young country way into the 21st century. And why? Immigration is 'America’s secret weapon.'  ... “First rich, then fat and lazy” will not be America’s fate. * * * America will be in trouble only when China becomes home to tomorrow’s hungry masses yearning to be free — and to make it." 

— Josef Joffe, reviewing “The Post-American World,” by Fareed Zakaria,

America sorts itself out geographically into blue- and red zones

From William A. Galston & Pietro S. Nivola, "Vote Like Thy Neighbor," NY Times, May 11, 2008 (bold-faced emphasis added):

... during the past two decades, many whites have moved to one group of cities and many blacks to another. Meanwhile, young people have deserted rural and older manufacturing areas for cities like Austin and Portland. Places with higher densities of college graduates attract even more, so that the gap between such communities and less-educated areas widens further. Zones of high education, in turn, produce more innovation and enjoy higher incomes, generating communities dominated by upper-middle-class tastes. Lower-educated regions, by contrast, tend to be more family-oriented and more faithful to traditional authority.

Not surprisingly, this demographic sorting correlates with a widening difference in political preferences. What’s more, according to Bishop and Cushing, once a tipping point is reached, majorities tend to become supermajorities. This is consistent with the findings of recent political science and social psychology: individuals in the minority of their group tend to shift their views toward the majority, while members of the majority become more extreme in their views. In such circumstances, discussions within groups often intensify, rather than moderate, the underlying polarization.

Our brains can deceive us, even about wine

From Eric Asimov, "Wine’s Pleasures: Are They All in Your Head?" NY Times, May 7, 2008:

But assuming for the moment that it’s true that most drinkers prefer the cheap stuff, why does anyone bother buying $55 cabernet? One answer is provided by a second experiment, in which presumably sober researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Business School demonstrated that the more expensive consumers think a wine is, the more pleasure they are apt to take in it.

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine, measuring sensations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where flavor responses apparently register. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive.

Being smart can be bad for your health - NY Times

From Carl Zimmer, Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better, NY Times, May 6, 2008:

Dr. Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others.  One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health.

* * *

The benefits of learning must have been enormous for evolution to have overcome those costs, Dr. Kawecki argues. For many animals, learning mainly offers a benefit in finding food or a mate. But humans also live in complex societies where learning has benefits, as well.

Read it all.

The sea can teach harsh lessons about the First Commandment

I've been enjoying watching the PBS series Carrier, showing an extended overseas deployment of the USS Nimitz. Between college and law school I did two similar deployments aboard the USS Enterprise.

The episode I watched last night examined some of the religious beliefs of different crew members — but only after a segment showing how dangerous it can be to try to land airplanes on a pitching deck in rough seas. 

The rough-seas segment offered a religious lesson of another sort, a harsh reminder that the First Commandment has a secular counterpart:  Survival requires us to face the facts, to deal as best we can with the reality that God wrought, instead of insisting on trying to live in a bubble created by our own wishful thinking.

In the search for extraterrestrial life, no news is good news - Nick Bostrom

There's a fascinating piece by physicist-philosopher Nick Bostrom in MIT's Technology Review.  Dr. Bostrom, of Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, mulls over Fermi's Paradox: the conjecture that if intelligent life were common in the universe, then we humans should have seen signs of it by now.

(For example, given the number of stars in the observable universe, one or more species likely would have achieved interstellar travel, even if only by self-replicating robots, which arguably we should have encountered by now.)

That we have not detected signs of intelligent life elsewhere, says Bostrom, suggests that there is a Great Filter that has prevented life from making it that far into space.  The filter could be that life itself is extremely hard to get started. That would be good news for us, inasmuch as we've already made it past that hurdle; it would mean that the Great Filter lies behind us in our existence as a species. 

The bad news would be if life proved comparatively easy to start, but difficult to sustain long enough to colonize interstellar space. This implies that existential doom may well await us in the future. 

And that, says Bostrom, is why:

... It would be good news if we find Mars to be sterile. Dead rocks and lifeless sands would lift my spirit.

Conversely, if we discovered traces of some simple, extinct life-form--some bacteria, some algae--it would be bad news.

If we found fossils of something more advanced, perhaps something that looked like the remnants of a trilobite or even the skeleton of a small mammal, it would be very bad news.

The more complex the life-form we found, the more depressing the news would be. I would find it interesting, certainly--but a bad omen for the future of the human race.

(Extra paragraphing added; hat tip: O'Reilly Radar.)

This is a major thought-provoker - definitely read it all.

Don't confuse me with the facts ....

Nicholas Kristof writes in today's NY Times about how bias can affect perception:

Psychologists showed a film clip of the football game to groups of students at each college and asked them to act as unbiased referees and note every instance of cheating. The results were striking. Each group, watching the same clip, was convinced that the other side had cheated worse — and this was not deliberate bias or just for show.

“Their eyes were taking in the same game, but their brains seemed to be processing the events in two distinct ways,” Farhad Manjoo writes in his terrific new book, “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.” It’s the best political book so far this year.

The title of the cited book is certainly intriguing; I'll have to look into it.

Kristof continues:

Mr. Manjoo cites a more recent study by Stanford University psychologists of students who either favored or opposed capital punishment. The students were shown the same two studies: one suggested that executions have a deterrent effect that reduces subsequent murders, and the other doubted that.

Whatever their stance, the students found the study that supported their position to be well-conducted and persuasive and the other one to be profoundly flawed.

“That led to a funny result,” Mr. Manjoo writes. “People in the study became polarized.”

A fair reading of the two studies might have led the students to question whether any strong conclusions could be drawn about deterrence, and thus to tone down their views on the death penalty.  But the opposite happened. Students on each side accepted the evidence that conformed to their original views while rejecting the contrary evidence — and so afterward students on both sides were more passionate and confident than ever of their views.

In other words, don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's already made up. Hmm... that sounds like some of the religious folks I know ....

You might think that people would have this tendency no matter what their ideology. And you would be wrong:

This resistance to information that doesn’t mesh with our preconceived beliefs afflicts both liberals and conservatives, but a raft of studies shows that it is a particular problem with conservatives. For example, when voters receive mailings offering them free pamphlets on various political topics, liberals show some interest in getting conservative views. In contrast, conservatives seek only those pamphlets that echo their own views.

Likewise, liberal blogs overwhelmingly link to other liberal blogs or news sources. But with conservative blogs, the tendency is much more pronounced; it is almost a sealed universe.

I've been a lifelong Republican, going back to elementary school, when I wanted to put a Goldwater sticker on my parents' car (they said no).

Lately, though, I've been thinking of myself as an independent, for reasons more or less along the lines Kristof describes. Fidelity to the First Commandment calls for us to face the facts; too many of today's so-called conservatives aren't willing to do that.

The scientist's prayer

[From Dennis Overbye in tomorrow's NY Times:]

In Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins,” the protagonist, a doctor and an inventor, recites what he calls the scientist’s prayer. It goes like this:

“Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.”

St. John the Divine gets a nice write-up in Ship of Fools

An English friend of long standing (I don't say "old friends" these days <g>) just advised my wife and me that our parish got a very nice write-up in Ship of Fools, a satirical UK Web site that uses mystery worshippers to review church services (and whose reviews can be quite acerbic). 

Excerpt:

How would you feel about making this church your regular (where 10 = ecstatic, 0 = terminal)?
9 – as an average. I'd give the service a 7 but I'd rate the community as a 10. If I were to relocate my family to Houston, this might well be the church of choice. I suspect it would be perfect for a family with teenagers. As far as personal liturgical taste goes, I would prefer an even stronger choral tradition and a higher liturgical practice, but could be happy here.

How many early Christians returned to plain Judaism?

The Book of Acts makes the claim that, in the earliest days of the church, "thousands" became followers of The Way (e.g., Acts 4), including "a large number of priests" (Acts 6.7, in today's BCP lectionary reading).  I gather the author was referring mainly to Jews. I'm curious about how many of these folks stayed with the church. At least some of them probably drifted back to a more-conventional variety of Judaism, or to nothing at all. I wonder what the percentages were in each category.

Dick Cavett answers Bob Herbert's question

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wants to know why the United States is (in his view) so inept these days:

This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Whatever happened to the dynamic country that flexed its muscles after World War II and gave us the G.I. Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations (in a quest for peace, not war), the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the finest higher education system the world has known, and a standard of living that was the envy of all?

America’s commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, and our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, went up to Capitol Hill this week but were unable to give any real answers as to when the U.S. might be able to disengage, or when a corner might be turned, or when a faint, flickering hopeful light might be glimpsed at the end of the long, horrific Iraqi tunnel.

A country that used to act like Babe Ruth now swings like a minor-leaguer. The all-American can-do philosophy has been smothered by the hapless can’t-do performances of the people who have been in charge for the past several years. It’s both tragic and embarrassing.

Herbert could have gotten a clue about why the U.S. today isn't like the U.S. of the late 1940s from the sheer arrogance displayed in fellow Times contributor Dick Cavett's blog posting of the previous evening.  That brilliant fool Cavett disdainfully mocked General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker for having chosen their words carefully in their testimony before Congress this past week. Excerpt:

... I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).

I find it painful to watch this team of two straight men, straining on the potty of language. Only to deliver such . . . what? Such knobbed and lumpy artifacts of superfluous verbiage? (Sorry, now I’m doing it…)

But I must hand it to his generalship. He did say something quite clearly and admirably and I am grateful for his frankness. He told us that our gains are largely imaginary: that our alleged “progress” is “fragile and reversible.” (Quite an accomplishment in our sixth year of war.) This provides, of course, a bit of pre-emptive covering of the general’s hindquarters next time that, true to Murphy’s Law, things turn sour again.

Back to poor Crocker. His brows are knitted. And he has a perpetually alarmed expression, as if, perhaps, he feels something crawling up his leg.

Could it be he is being overtaken by the thought that an honorable career has been besmirched by his obediently doing the dirty work of the tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas? The one whose foolish military misadventure seems to increasingly resemble that of Gen. George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn?

Of the 104 comments to Cavett's piece of used toilet paper, nearly 90% take up his cry; only a few defended the general and the ambassador. I've reproduced the best defenses below after correcting a couple of minor spelling errors:

Steve: "Your leisurely, decadent lampooning of serious men who serve the nation at a critical time and place is both cynical and unsurprising."

Jon Entwistle:  "Petraeus and Crocker are doing their best to convey serious and complex information on a most difficult situation, and Mr. Cavett thinks it is appropriate to mock their delivery?"

James Currin: "It is ever the fate of serious men to endure the disparagement and mockery of peanuts."

gje: "Since carefully chosen words are the tools of your profession, I would expect you to have a little more respect for those who are required to use them. These men knew their words would be picked apart and manipulated by the likes of you, so can you blame them for exercising caution?"

Paul Dimiter: "Embedded in Mr. Cavett’s surly comments are not one but two mocking references to military awards for service and courage under fire, remarks that at best are unseemly and at worst disclose the possible cause of such embarrassing snideness: the fact that such awards, and the qualities that earned them, have always been beyond his reach. When at the peak of his fame Mr. Cavett was a young curmudgeon, and there was a certain charm in that; but now at long last he does qualify for an award, the Falstaff Award: 'How ill white hairs become a fool and jester.'"

Roger Knouse: "I guess you don’t like to get back what you give out. Generals aren’t allowed to play the definition of is game. Only the academia, political, and media elite may participate in postured prose. You included."

Patrick: "As far as I can divine the soldiers and my son in the 82nd airborne report Patraeus as a fine leader doing a good job. So Dick Cavatt who doesn’t like big words (hah hah!)criticizes a fine General. Who’s Dick Cavatt and what does he do?"

John Murnane: "Petreaus took a round in the chest on a training exercise and wrote a PhD on the lessons learned on Viet Nam. He’s stepped up to improve a terribly complex and deadly reality. While Cavett and his ilk take cheap shots from their cocktail parties."

Jarhead: "For my part, once you made the admission months ago that as a young Bevis with your pal Butthead circa 1950, you intentionally set off firecrackers next to your uncle the Marine who had fought at Iwo Jima and had PTSD, I must confess I mentally exited caring about your worldview."

Mike: "A wise man told me many years ago that the reason journalists (Cavett) dislike soldiers (Petraeus) so much is that, when they were all in high school, guys like David would stuff guys like Dick in their wall lockers."

Steve Fraasch: "If only someone as smart as Mr. Cavett would enlighten us on alternatives to our current plan, that doesn’t result in a civil war, I am all ears. Then we’d really have something to listen to."

Anglican reasserters could have a learning disability

I enjoy the doctrinal discussions I have with my "reasserter" friends at TitusOneNine. But I continue to be baffled by the tortured logic with which many of them try to justify their views.

A common reasserter syllogism is ridiculous

Some reasserters appear to be literally incapable of grasping that there might be possibilities in life other than the ones that they’ve conceived:

• They like Possibility A;
• Possibility B is unlikely, or disagreeable;
• By process of elimination, A it is; indeed, A it must be; and
• Anyone who wants to take into account Possibilities C, D, etc., is either foolish or malign.

Here's a typical example of this kind of thinking, as argued by some reasserters: 

• The New Testament accounts are either trustworthy, or they’re not;
• We cannot say those accounts are categorically untrustworthy; they're at least as trustworthy as, say, Tacitus's account of Caesar's wars; 
• By process of elimination, it's our duty to reframe our entire lives around at least the "relevant" portions of the New Testament accounts. (Who defines "relevant," and how, is of course another huge argument.)

Here’s another example: If Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t raised from the dead, then our faith is worthless. In other words, if we were to discover compelling evidence that Jesus stayed dead, then (supposedly) nothing he said or did during his lifetime would be of any value to us.

I’m not going to mince words: That kind of reasoning is nuts. We expect better from intelligent middle-schoolers. (And sure enough, that’s about the age when a lot of young people start questioning "The  Faith Once Delivered.")

Sure, in the right circumstances, the process of elimination can be useful. But it’s just one of the tools in the toolbox. It might not always be the one to use — when you need to make a precise cut in a piece of wood, it’s literally imbecilic to insist on using a hammer.

The proof is in the results

But how do we know that the reasserters aren’t right anyway?  Well, we get a pretty good indicator in the observable results:

• Reasserters claim that their view leads to eternal life for those accepting it. But they have exactly zero reliable evidence to support that claim. We hope and trust that there's a life after this one, but we have no idea what really happens when you die. The reasserter claim amounts to so much wishful thinking.

• In contrast, the so-called Enlightenment mindset has, by several orders of magnitude, done a better job of understanding and dealing with the reality that God has wrought. It has thereby helped us to do a better job as workers in (what appears to be) his ongoing project of creation.

---

Related post: How to judge the claims of testimony

Veggie goop - a tasty, healthy, low-cal snack (or meal)

[UPDATED] This afternoon I made my second big batch of vegetable goop:

• a lot of chopped-up veggies and fruits — whatever you like;
• almonds;[UPDATE: leave the almonds out, and add them to a bowl of the goop when you eat it] 
• sunflower seeds; [Ditto]
• a couple of cans of tuna (or cut-up pre-cooked turkey Kielbasa);
• a dollop of mayonnaise [UPDATE: or yogurt, or sour cream, or a mixture thereof];
• optional:  a little bit of horse radish;
• optional:  some garlic salt.

Mix well. Refrigerate the left-overs.

It's not much to look at, but boy does it taste good, and the veggies and nuts are good for you.

When you think about it, we're talking a variation on vegetable stew.

[UPDATE: Next time I'm going to try leaving out the almonds and sunflower seeds, because I suspect that something in them is what causes the goop to taste just a little bitter after a day or two in the refrigerator. I'll try sprinkling the nuts and seeds on a bowlful of the glop just before eating it.]

A phrase bubbles out of my memory from high school:  Nutritious, delicious, and good for you too!

[UPDATE: The goop is great on a piece of toast for breakfast, and also for a mid-morning or -afternoon snack.]

The first time I made the goop was a month or so ago. I wanted something to snack on that was healthier than cheese and crackers. It turned out that a small bowl of the goop filled me up for hours without making me sleepy. When my wife was out of town on business, I ate it for meals, and dropped a couple of pounds. So it's going to become a staple of my diet.

How to judge the claims of testimony

In looking up something I'd written awhile back, I ran across this comment, which I posted in another thread two years ago, in response to a query whether I categorically disbelieved all testimony. I've done some light editing, mostly to change from first-person to third-person.

* * *

In a nutshell, my view of testimony is basically that of my profession, viz., Anglo-American jurisprudence.

We should be initially skeptical of all testimony, and should indeed initially doubt it on principle. We shouldn't take any consequential action in reliance on particular testimony until we're shown sufficient other evidence to persuade us that, for the matter in question, the potential consequences of error make it reasonably safe to take a chance on the testimony.

Circumstances alter the case, of course. For a decision with comparatively little downside, it should take less to persuade us of the testimony's reliability.

At a minimum, though, we shouldn't credit someone's testimony, allowing it to influence our decisions — and even that's not the same as giving the testimony conclusive weight, that is, letting it make up our minds for us about what to do — unless at least the following conditions are met:

(a) Does the testimony have sufficient foundation? Before we rely on testimony in a consequential matter, we should insist on being presented with sufficient evidence to persuade us that the witness has reason to know what s/he's talking about. This is called "laying a foundation"; a common event in trial work is "objection, your honor, lack of foundation."

We impose the foundation requirement because we want to know how the witness came to know what s/he claims to know. From millennia of experience, we know that people can readily say things that they think they "know," whereas on closer scrutiny it turns out that they really didn't know it at all; instead, they were imagining things, or they were repeating what they'd heard from someone else, or they were simply remembering incorrectly.

Here's a canonical example: If the witness wants to testify that the light was green, the other lawyer will object, and the judge won't allow the jury to hear the testimony, unless it's first established — e.g., by the witness's own sworn testimony — that the witness was in fact in a position to see the light at the time in question. If the witness is wearing glasses while testifying, we're going to ask whether he was wearing glasses at the time in question (cf. the cross-examination scene from the movie My Cousin Vinnie). And so on.

Now of course, in everyday non-courtroom life, we routinely apply a looser variation of the foundation requirement — assuming, that is, that the evidence otherwise seems sufficiently trustworthy for its intended purpose.

Here's an example. Suppose my wife says "take your umbrella, it's going to rain." Normally I'm not going to cross-examine her about how she came to that conclusion. I'm going to assume that she looked at the newspaper, or heard the weather report on the radio, or looked outside and saw threatening clouds.  In that case, I'm willing to get by with less foundational evidence because the downside of an error is essentially zero. (If my wife is on an out-of-town business trip when she says it's going to rain, I'm going to be at least mildly curious how she knows what she's talking about.)

In contrast, if my doctor tells me I've got cancer of the testicles and need to have them immediately cut off, you can bet I'm going to explore the foundation for his assertion before I let the surgeon take a scalpel to me.

The Prologue of the Gospel of John is a classic example of lack of foundation. The author asserts that certain things happened at the beginning of time. But we have no evidence, direct or indirect, to suggest that "John" knew what he was talking about. Scripturalists want us to rely on that passage from John (and many, many other foundationless passages in the Bible), in making perhaps the biggest decision of our lives, namely to accept the assertion that Jesus was God incarnate. IMHO, that decision is far too important to base on foundationless assertions like that.

The factual testimony of the New Testament documents is replete with similar examples of lack of foundation. Some of the testimony I'm willing to accept, despite its lack of foundation, for reasons I'd have to look at on a case-by-case basis. As to other foundationless testimony, however, I'm not willing to accept it.

(b) Is the likelihood of unacceptable distortion sufficiently low?  Before we rely on testimony, the surrounding evidence should make us comfortable that the testimony is likely to be "sufficiently" free from distortion to be trustworthy for its intended purpose.

Again from long experience, we know that testimony can often be distorted, in a variety of ways.

(i) Testimony can be distorted as it is passed along from person to person, such as in the "telephone game" — that's why we have a hearsay rule; or

(ii) Testimony can be distorted by the witness having an apparent bias, or an agenda, or an axe to grind, or any of a number of possible memory problems — that's why we have a requirement for cross-examination, so that we can explore these possibilities to get the complete picture. Cf. the rule in Numbers and Deut. prohibiting putting anyone to death except on the testimony of at least two witnesses, as well as the Commandment against bearing false witness against thy neighbor.

(Elsewhere, I've written about indications of possible distortion in the various New Testament documents, including for example indications of possible bias in the Gospel of John and in Paul's letters.)

Again, circumstances alter the case. For a highly consequential decision, though, we should want to be very confident that the testimony hasn't been distorted. (Cf. again the OT rule about not putting someone to death except on the testimony of at least two witnesses.) For a less-consequential decision, we needn't be quite so cautious.

(c) Have alternative possibilities been given sufficient weight? When a doctor diagnoses an illness and prescribes treatment, she normally tries to rule out problematic alternatives. When a patient comes in and "testifies" that his throat is sore, it could be just a symptom of a common cold that can be treated by gargling with salt water. But it could also be strep throat, so the doctor will often order a strep culture, and sometimes will preemptively put the patient on an antibiotic just in case.

Similarly, when a New Testament witness offers the conclusory testimony that (for example) Jesus was raised from the dead, we need to identify exactly what the witnesses perceived, and to explore possible alternative explanations for the evidence, before we make major, life-changing decisions on that basis.

Doubt is one of our noblest capacities

Bishop Don Wimberly presided and preached this morning.  Great sermon, based on the story of Doubting Thomas in today's Gospel reading. 

Some of the things he said (I paraphrase):

• Jesus was a doubter. He was a doubter about the Judaic notion of a warlord messiah. He was a doubter that without strict adherence to the Law it was impossible to be in a right relationship with God.

• Don't despise your doubt: Honor it; it's one of your noblest capacities.

• The faith you merely inherit, without ever questioning and struggling with it, will never truly be your own.

• An honest doubter, by subjecting his own doubts to the process of doubt, can come to faith by process of elimination.

* * *

I jotted down some thoughts of my own while listening to the bishop. Here's an edited version:

Doubt arises from a willingness to admit we don't know it all; a willingness to remain open to the reality that God wrought, instead of claiming (in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) that we already know everything we'll ever need to know.

Doubt is thus an important contributor to faith as defined by the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor: "[An] openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be."

What the Presiding Bishop ought to be saying about the constructive resignation of San Joaquin's (former) standing committee

This weekend the Diocese of San Joaquin held a reorganization meeting in the wake of the departure of its former bishop, John-David Schofield. Some conservatives have protested that the meeting was supposedly illegal. Their argument is that a majority of the San Joaquin standing-committee members did not resign, nor did they leave the Episcopal Church; therefore, the protestors claim, the standing committee continues to be the Ecclesiastical Authority in the diocese, meaning that the national church has no authority to replace the elected standing committee nor otherwise to interfere in diocesan affairs.

In trying to justify the national church's action, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori goofed: She relied (1) on the supposed deposition of Bishop Schofield from ordained ministry, and (2) on the argument that the former standing committee members took action inconsistent with their fiduciary responsibilities.

That was a mistake as to the first point because the deposition of Bishop Schofield never happened (the deposition motion having failed to achieve the canonically-required number of votes). 

And it was a mistake as to the second point because "group guilt" is unacceptable. The national church should not be tarring the DSJ standing committee members with the brush of breach of fiduciary responsibilities until, for each individual member, the church makes a determination (involving at least some sort of notice and opportunity to be heard), that the member's personal conduct warranted such action.

What the PB should have done was to take a simpler approach, namely declaring that:

• Bishop Schofield had indisputably resigned;
• the standing-committee members had constructively resigned by failing to dissent publicly from the San Joaquin diocese's purported secession;
• the canons do not contain an express procedure for dealing with such an extraordinary situation; and
• the Presiding Bishop and Executive Council, acting under their general canonical authority, are going to do what needs to be done to deal with these situations.

Specifically, the PB should have gotten the Executive Council, and also the House of Bishops, to approve the following resolution: 

1. It's beyond peradventure that Bishop Schofield has resigned his see in TEC. He walked off the job, publicly announced his intention not to return, and submitted a letter of resignation from the House of Bishops.

The fact of his resignation was not altered by the House of Bishop's failure to muster the required votes to impose a particular consequence, namely complete deposition from ordained ministry.

Nor was the fact of the resignation altered by absence of approval by the House of Bishops. The approval requirement is not a prerequisite to the effectiveness of a resignation (in legal terms, a condition precedent). Bishop Schofield's resignation was unauthorized, and therefore constituted a breach of the canons, but it was effective even without authorization.

Bishop Schofield is thus still technically an ordained bishop, because the motion in the House of Bishops to depose him from ordained ministry did not achieve the required number of votes. But, by virtue of his actions, he is no longer bishop of TEC's diocese of San Joaquin. 

2. Few if any members of the San Joaquin standing committee timely dissented publicly from the ultra vires action of the diocesan convention on December 8 last, which purported to secede from the Episcopal Church. (I don't know whether this statement is true; anyone know otherwise? Link, please?)

3. Every member of the San Joaquin standing committee who did not timely dissent to secession, publicly and on the record, is deemed to have constructively resigned, even if individual members later professed their desire to remain in the Episcopal Church.  In the extraordinary circumstances presented by the December meeting of the diocesan convention, the burden was on each individual standing-committee member to make a clear, timely statement of his dissent. This borrows from corporate- and securities law, in which each individual member of a board of directors is deemed liable for certain corporate actions, regardless whether she personally favored it, unless she timely stated her dissent on the record.

4. As a result, the San Joaquin standing committee can no longer muster a quorum and is legally incapable of taking any action whatsoever. (I have no idea whether this statement is true under the diocesan canons.)

5. The extraordinary situation described above is not expressly addressed by TEC's constitution and canons.  The Presiding Bishop and Executive Committee will therefore take such action as is necessary to replace the DSJ's former leadership, proceeding under their general canonical responsibility "for leadership in initiating and developing the policy and strategy in the Church ..." (Canon I.2.4(a)((1), concerning the Presiding Bishop) and "[to] have charge of the coordination, development, and implementation of the ministry and mission of the Church ...." (Canon I.4.1(a), concerning the Executive Council).

Are we smarter than the ancients?

Over at TitusOneNine, some of the commenters are rehearsing their scorn for the so-called liberal notion that we today are supposedly smarter than the ancients.

We probably aren’t any more innately gifted than the ancients were. But it’s indisputable that the intellectual tools we have for observing and making sense of the universe are many orders of magnitude better than what the ancients had.  Those tools are the result of thousands of years of accumulated experience and insights, tested against the reality of the world that God wrought.

(We should certainly hope that our gifts of memory, reason, and skill would have improved our intellectual tools over all this time!)

At the controls of his personal jet plane, John Travolta can cover the 26+ miles of the marathon run in roughly 3 minutes.  It’s thought that Phidippides, the ancient Greek hero of Marathon, took about 3 hours. It’s not that Travolta is 60 times better as an athlete; he just has better transportation tools.

Ivan Dixon of "Hogan's Heroes" dies

"Kinch" was probably my favorite character in the old Hogan's Heroes series, which was one of my favorite shows when I was 10 years old. Ivan Dixon, who played Kinchloe, died this past Sunday:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Actor Ivan Dixon, who brought the problems and promise of contemporary blacks to life in the film "Nothing But a Man" and portrayed the levelheaded POW Kinchloe in TV's "Hogan's Heroes," has died. He was 76.

Dixon died Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte after a hemorrhage, said his daughter, Doris Nomathande Dixon of Charlotte. He had suffered complications from kidney failure, she said.

* * *

"As an actor, you had to be careful," said Sidney Poitier, star of "Patch of Blue" and a longtime friend. "He was quite likely to walk off with the scene."

* * *

Dixon was active in efforts to get better parts for blacks in movies and television, telling The New York Times in 1967: "Sponsors haven't wanted anything negative connected with their products. We must convince them that the Negro is not negative."

"Heretofore, people have thought that, to use a Negro, the story must pit black against white. Maybe we're getting to the problems of human beings who happen to be black."

* * *

In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife of 53 years, Berlie Dixon of Charlotte, and a son, Alan Kimara Dixon of Oakland. At Dixon's request, no memorial or funeral is planned, the family said.

Evolutionary basis for Spitzer's adultery?

Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Natalie Angier has a piece today in the NY Times about the rarity of monogamy in animal species:

... Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy.

Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form “pair bonds” of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.

Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.

(Extra paragraphing added.)

Evolutionary psychologists and social biologists tend to think that this furtive, uneasy coexistence of monogamy and promiscuity arises from a confluence of genetic- and social factors:

• All of us are descendants of ancestors who, by definition, did at least the minimum necessary to pass on copies of their genes to another generation.
• Statistically, a father who cheats on his mate is likely to pass on more copies of his genes than one who doesn't cheat (because he's more likely to have a greater number of offspring).
• Other things being equal, a mother who tries to enforce fidelity in her mate is more likely to have help, economic and otherwise, in raising her offspring; this ups the odds that her offspring will survive to reproductive age and pass on copies of her genes (and their fathers') to grandchildren.
• On average, mothers who cheat are likely to diversify the genetic risk portfolio of their offspring, because of the increased odds that their offspring will be fathered by several different males of varying genetic profiles.
• When parents stay together to help with the raising of their grandchildren, it enhances even further the odds of that parents' genes will survive into future generations.

In short, from a purely-pragmatic perspective, both monogamy and promiscuity have their evolutionary advantages.

I suspect this is another example of the watermelon-seed effect, in which opposing forces — in this case, the desire for both sexual freedom and a faithful mate — can unexpectedly result in progress (cf. the Hegelian dialectic).