MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data

By Rick C. Hodgin
TG Daily

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's contributions.

Methane - powerful greenhouse gas

The two lead authors of a paper published in this week's Geophysical Review Letters, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, state that as a result of the increase, several million tons of new methane is present in the atmosphere.

Methane accounts for roughly one-fifth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, though its effect is 25x greater than that of carbon dioxide. Its impact on global warming comes from the reflection of the sun's light back to the Earth (like a greenhouse). Methane is typically broken down in the atmosphere by the free radical hydroxyl (OH), a naturally occuring process. This atmospheric cleanser has been shown to adjust itself up and down periodically, and is believed to account for the lack of increases in methane levels in Earth's atmosphere over the past ten years despite notable simultaneous increases by man.

More study

Prinn has said, "The next step will be to study [these changes] using a very high-resolution atmospheric circulation model and additional measurements from other networks. The key thing is to better determine the relative roles of increased methane emission versus [an increase] in the rate of removal. Apparently we have a mix of the two, but we want to know how much of each [is responsible for the overall increase]."

The primary concern now is that 2007 is long over. While the collected data from that time period reflects a simultaneous world-wide increase in emissions, observing atmospheric trends now is like observing the healthy horse running through the paddock a year after it overcame some mystery illness. Where does one even begin? And how relevant are any of the data findings at this late date? Looking back over 2007 data as it was captured may prove as ineffective if the data does not support the high resolution details such a study requires.

One thing does seem very clear, however; science is only beginning to get a handle on the big picture of global warming. Findings like these tell us it's too early to know for sure if man's impact is affecting things at the political cry of "alarming rates." We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times - one that's been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occuring for hundreds of thousands of years.

Project funding

Rigby and Prinn carried out this study with help from researchers at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Bristol and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Methane gas measurements came from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Australian CSIRO network.

Patriotism Firmly Rooted in Mid-Air

By Mr. Robert Thomas Llizo
Scriptorium Daily

One morning last week, as I was driving to the Biola campus to teach a session on Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, I came across two vehicles with two very different sets of bumper stickers. One said “God Bless the World,” and the other, displaying his patriotism for all to see, featured a proud portrayal of the Statue of Liberty, with the words “God Bless America” blazoned over it.

I am like many self-styled American “conservatives” in this regard: I am extremely impatient with bumper stickers and signs that say “God Bless The World.” I know what they’re trying to say: God’s love encompasses the whole world, and we must not presume to think for one moment that God’s providential care is limited to one nation. I reply with a hearty, affirmative “Amen” to this. But I’m afraid there is a more sinister side to this position that these well-meaning folk miss, and miss at their peril. They run the risk of falling victim to an abstract sort of “love for humanity,” a solidarity with the “human race” which, C.S. Lewis reminds us, can easily turn into an excuse not to love anyone at all. Stalin and Pol Pot were “lovers of humanity,” yet had no qualms sending a good number of individuals to their deaths simply because they did not conform to their ideal of “humanity.” This is the temptation that befalls all “lovers of humanity”-a destructive love of an abstraction. Love of country forms the basic and necessary chain of affections which tie a person to a family, a community, and a nation, without which love of the human family is, if not impossible, very, very difficult to attain. How can you love “humanity” without loving particular people? You learn this through the complex web of relationships, beginning with family, extending to one’s community, city, village, etc., to the love of one’s country, and on to the world.

But I must also wonder about the “good American” who plasters his bumper with “God bless America,” the Statue of Liberty prominently displayed bearing the “torch of freedom,” stars and stripes fluttering everywhere. What, in fact, is this fellow’s love and allegiance? Is it to an actual country, with its complex web of communities, history, traditions, local customs, and shared experiences? Or is it to an abstraction? If you ask a typical “patriotic” American why he has a devotion to his country, the usual answer you are likely to get will include the words “liberty,” “freedom,” “rights,” etc. To him, America is an idea, a concept, which encompasses the “ideals” of liberty, freedom and justice for all.

So is it “ideals” to which the typical American patriot locates his devotion? The American patriot’s affections become directed not so much to a place, a community, a nation with history and tradition which mark its own uniqueness, but to a set of abstractions. Do you ever hear any mention of his love for the American people? Do you ever hear him express a love for his city? For his state? Of his neighbors? Does he even know his neighbors?

The modern American notion of patriotism, I’m afraid, is closely akin to that of Imperial Rome’s notion of itself as something more than a city on the banks of the Tiber. This is captured in the concept of Roma Aeterna, Eternal Rome, a reality that exists in the mind of the gods (it was usually figured in coins as a lady seated on a throne, holding the sun and the moon-an emblem of Rome’s mastery over the world). For the typical Roman, Rome meant order, civilization, light, glory, peace, over against the barbaric hordes that hemmed her in, and which she must subdue. There was a sense of mission associated with this, as Romans were to subdue the world around them, bringing the light of Roman civilization to every tribe and people that was benighted by the darkness of barbarity and lack of civitas. This sense of “Roman-ness” is captured by that indefagitable celebrant of the new Augustan order, Virgil, who, in his Aeneid, has the central hero, Aeneas, sojourn through the Underworld in Book Six, where he meets his dead father, Anchises. Up to this point, Aeneas (often called pius-”dutiful”), seems to stumble a great deal, at one point being tempted by the love of Dido to stay in what would eventually become Carthage instead of moving on at the gods’ insistence to build the city of Rome. Anchises shows him a “parade” of endless prominent Romans that would be the lions of his race: Cato, Marcellus, Quirinus, Fabius Maximus, etc., and gives him this charge: “Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth’s peoples-for your arts are to be these: To pacify, to impose the rule of law, To spare the conquered, battle down the proud” (Virgil, Aeneid, [trans. Robert Fitzgerald] New York: Vintage Classics, 1990 Book VI:1151-1154). Rome is thus defined as an entity whose divine mandate was to bring peace, “impose the rule of law,” thus bringing a settled life among the world’s barbarians.

Freedom, rights, and liberty are great things, but unless they are rooted in natural law, and understood to be mediated through historical and cultural experiences that provide a cohesiveness that binds a people together, then they will forever remain nice ideas that have no relevance to human experience. Edmund Burke’s criticism of the French Revolution was precisely directed at its commitment to liberte, egalite, fraternite, having destroyed its existing constitution-the French monarchy, and its institutions-thus cutting itself off from its own history. The Englishman, Burke countered, knew his rights not on the basis of “abstractions,” but as an “inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity-as an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom, without any reference to any other more general or prior right” (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford, 1993) p. 33). It is indeed rooted in natural law, but they come to us rooted in historical and institutional developments that are unique to the constitution of our country. Each nation, and culture, must figure out for itself how these principles will best be realized within its own constitution.

A patriotism that is not rooted in culture, history, community, and tradition will forever be condemned to the same sort of empty abstractions into which the “lover of humanity” has consigned himself. The Mexican, being no lover of his government, will nonetheless swell with pride as he yells out Viva Mexico! But it does not end there, for it is quite common that that same fellow will shout out an affectionate shout for his home state: Viva Guanajuato! Viva Michoacan! You get the idea.

I think that Mexican, far from home, is on to something. He feels a swelling pride for his country (as well every person should), but he has also learned (or not forgotten) where he is from specifically. He is from a community, a village, which is part of a larger municipality, which itself is part of a larger state. It is this context which shapes his love for his country: a love formed from the ground up.

You want to love your country? Start by loving your neighbors.

Joe the Plumber

By Anthony Esolen
Touchstone Magazine

Part 1

By now most everyone's seen the video clip of "Joe the Plumber," making the rounds on the e-waves, in his brief conversation with the TV anchoress. What fascinates me about the interview was that it seemed we were watching creatures from two utterly different universes, or from two different epochs. The anchoress -- I'm not sure who it was; I don't watch them -- was all smiles, all makeup, with her expensive coif and her neat business suit. Then you have Joe, nearly bald, stocky, wearing an ordinary sweat shirt and jacket, hardly smiling at all; it was as if he thought that the election hinged upon matters that transcended the moment, and that were certainly more important than his own brief burst of notoriety.

I'd like to think that Joe may do his part in turning the election -- who knows? So I've decided to post something each day for the next week on what we can glean from that interview. The most significant, as I see it: Joe's refusal to take the socialist bait. We all complain about high taxes; even people I know who pay a small fraction of what I pay still complain about their payments. That's a part of living in a civilized society. It can mean as little as idle talk about the weather, or the Red Sox. Most of us, too, will concede that the idea of taxation is not inherently unjust. We need government to do some things that we cannot do, or can hardly do, on our own -- to provide for national defense, for instance. So we agree to pay taxes to enable the government to do that. It is a contribution (and it should be a modest contribution) to a part (and it should be a modest part) of the common good.

But what happens when taxes are used not for the sake of something we each have a share in, as roads and armies? Then we might see the tax code used, for instance, as a powerful weapon of social control -- and examples of this are everywhere to be found in our country; in fact, it's hard for me to determine whether the tax code as it stands is primarily a revenue gathering device for Washington, or a behavior controlling device. Yet that is not the worst use that taxes can be put to, not by far, even discounting the use of the money for what is downright evil, such as, to use Archbishop Chaput's recent words, the millions of "little murders" that we have committed over the last decades. One can collect taxes in order to rig up a vision of what a utopian society would look like, regardless of the fact that the vision is not shared by everyone, or that there is no tangible and immediate good that the taxes would purchase, in whose benefit everyone would share (as is the case with roads, and possibly with schools). And that's no more than state sanctioned theft.

The notorious eminent domain case coming out of -- where else? -- Chicago a few years ago is a case in point. Property was seized -- people were compelled to sell their homes -- not so that a new road would be built (roads do have to be built sometimes; that is the sort of thing that the provision for eminent domain was meant to allow for), but so that a private developer could come in, tear down the old homes, build new ones, sell them at a profit, and provide a bigger base of revenue for the city. If we chop out the middle steps in the series of exchanges, it amounted to nothing more than a claim by Chicago that the people in those homes had to sell them because Chicago wanted more money out of them, period. And that is analogous to Mr. Obama's statement to Joe the Plumber, that some people should pay higher taxes, not because they need to shoulder a fair share of the burden for building things that contribute to the common good (although, as it's been pointed out in many places, the lower forty percent of tax filers are paying no federal income tax at all), but simply because some people in power believe that it would be a good thing merely to take money from Joe and give it to Ed. Joe, in their august determination, has money to spare, and Ed would like some of it. At which point one wonders, morally, what the difference is, if Ed simply decided to cut out the middleman, to spare the taxpayers all the red tape, and maybe even to save Joe a little money too, by robbing him outright of, let's say, half of the money that the revenooers would have taken from Joe (while skimming their take from the top, for the laborer is worthy of his hire).

Joe understood all this. Asked by the anchoress what difference it made to him -- since he obviously did not make a quarter of a million dollars a year, he being a lowly plumber, of all things, and not a stylish anchoress reading fifth-grade English from a teleprompter -- if people making above that level were taxed at a higher rate, just an itty witty bit higher, he replied, almost as if his honor were impugned by the very question, that he didn't want their money to be taken from them. Why should he? "That's socialism," he said, cutting to the heart of the matter, noting that the rich already pay more in taxes, because they pay according to their higher income. It never occurred to the reporter, though you could see it was flashing through Joe's mind, that small business owners often file taxes as if they were single taxpayers, and that a quarter of a million dollars in a good year is by no means unthinkable for a contractor or a farmer. That doesn't make them permanently rich; there are some bad years mixed in with those good years; and there's no guarantee that you'll be able to continue doing that kind of difficult work until your old age. So, no, he didn't think it was a good idea to take money from his own pocket and stick it in someone else's, or to take money from someone else's pocket and stick it in his, merely because some poobah with authority grossly disproportionate to what he should justly exercise thought it was fine and dandy. It's as if the thief were to say, "What's it to you, pal? I'm only taking the cash. I'm leaving you your credit cards. The nerve of some people!"

And through it all I hear the sonorous voice of the Anointed One, the Blessed Obama, intoning that he did not want to punish Joe's success, no, but he did want to "spread the wealth around," he with the brother who lives in a hovel in Kenya, he with the running mate whose idea of charitable giving apparently is to flip a nickel once in a while to the drunk on the streetcorner. There's such a contrast there, too: the smug and spoiled academic, who has never met a payroll, never got his hands filthy or cut up with tough work, judging from his Solomonic chair just how much of the man's baby should be sliced off for the benefit of somebody else. "By what authority?" asked Joe, another question that the reporter never considered. For in this life, the only way to level is with a great big steamroller; we can only be made equal in one respect by means of monstrous inequality in another. But that's all right; we can all lie prone before the Messiah.

Part 2

One of the unhealthiest features of our current way of life, I'm persuaded, is the removal of "professionals" from the company and neighborhood of truck drivers, carpenters, concrete layers, miners, dressmakers, maids, and plumbers. When John McCain was growing up, no doubt, there was a certain stratification of American society according to income, as there is now. But in most places, the doctor lived near the bricklayer and went to the same church; not in the wealthy neighborhoods of the large cities, but in small cities, and small towns like the one where I grew up. More than that, men had that great experience of learning just what a snotty nose and a degree from Harvard will get you when you're digging a trench in boot camp, or sweating in the barracks on a summer night. A sergeant major with an unsteady grasp of grammar might put many a baby-chinned lieutenant from West Point in his place.

What's happened since is apparent in this presidential race, and in the interview with Joe the Plumber. Take Joe first. Here is a man who was going to leave the interview to go to a local gas station, because a water main had burst beneath it. He was being interviewed by a lady who looked as if she had never had to worry, all her life long, about breaking a fingernail at work. He was going to do a job that required hard, practical knowledge, and if he messed things up, it would mean at least a great mess, and at worst a disaster. Her job requires no such; the only risk she runs is that she might say something so silly that even a television audience might notice, and put her ratings in danger. He was about to handle hard, sometimes apparently intractable, materials, things that don't oblige our utopian dreams. The iron pipe does not condescend to political correctness. It won't say, "I see that I should move into place no matter who or what is lugging me, because that would be the democratic thing to do." There's a bracing reality in such things as iron, or earth, or even PVC, not to mention water, that wondrous bringer of life that can bring ruin, too, if it's not under control. You have to learn to submit to those realities, and yet master them anyway, to the extent that anyone can. And that's a lesson that should keep you from believing that men are infinitely malleable, can become just what really smart people can make them if only we trust those geniuses with tyrannical power -- when nothing else you see around you is so.

The anchor lady seems never to have had to learn such a lesson; she spoke to Joe the Plumber with all the bright eyed naivete of someone who believes that the Peaceable Kingdom is just around the corner. But, more worrisome than that, it is a lesson that Barack Obama has never had to learn. Not that he couldn't have learned it, had he spent a few years as a dockworker, or had he gone to haul building materials for construction in Kenya. Instead, he's the sort of person around whom I've spent most of my working life: he's an academic, gone into lawyering and then into politics. When he says to Joe the Plumber, "I don't want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that the guy behind you has the same opportunity," he says it with the superiority of an old-fashioned snob -- with this important qualitification: many an old-fashioned snob, like Franklin Roosevelt, spent time in the armed services, did a lot of work with his hands on the estate, and lived a vigorous life outdoors, among ostlers and farmers and such. He says it with not the slightest awareness that Joe is where he is not simply because of some abstract "opportunity," but because of that opportunity seized. He does not consider what it cost Joe to seize it: the hard work in often lousy conditions; the all-day, all-week jobs; the banged up toes and bruised knees and bad back; the chancy contracts; even the hardscrabble men you have to employ to get the work done. Obama wants to take Joe's money into his baby-smooth hands. Had he some half-inch thick calluses around the thumbs, he'd not be so quick to take it.

He'd understand -- and he does not in fact understand -- that he can sooner bring Ed, who lags behind Joe, up to Joe's standard, not by giving Ed some of Joe's money, but by making Ed adopt Joe's habits, or by giving Ed some of Joe's strengths. Let Ed be as smart as Joe. Let him have as strong a back. Let him not mind rain and mud. Let him not take so many breaks for food and drink and a cigarette. Let him have a better eye for the workers who cost you more than they are worth. Let him treat his customers with the same courtesy and honesty. Let him build up those same calluses. Or let him not do it -- perhaps Ed has determined he has better things to do with his time and his strength! That is fine, too.

One last thing that neither Obama nor the anchorlady understands. That is the leadership of men, in rough circumstances, to get a difficult job done. John McCain didn't grow up in a poor family, but during his teenage years and then in the academy he lived like a spartan, because that's the way things were at his Episcopal boarding school for boys, and then at Annapolis. Then came the war. Joe the Plumber is, apparently, a contractor, hiring men to work for him at things like digging up the blacktop at a gas station to fix the water main. That is far more real than reading a canned text handed to you by a team of platitudinarians. It is more real than using your lawyer's leverage to funnel money to the local slumlord. Now if Obama had spent a year or two pounding in joists to shore up a bad roof in a tenement building, I'd revise my remarks. The point is that he has done nothing of the sort, ever. And he may be the first major candidate about whom one can say that: the first pure product of the land of Pointless Work; an academic who was handsomely paid for teaching nonsense; then a lawyer handsomely paid for cleaning up no neighborhoods; now a candidate whose deep anthropological appeal -- regardless of what the politically correct anchor lady would say -- is that he is a tall man with a deep voice. Would that he possessed the habits of life that have been known to go along with those.

Part 3

There was a tense moment in that interview between Joe the Plumber and the anchorwoman that people haven't really talked about, at least not that I've heard. It marks the difference between those who believe in natural spheres of authority and therefore in natural limits to any particular office's authority, and those who do not, and for good reason -- since if there are no natural authorities, whoever possesses power may do with it whatever he pleases, so long as he can keep the proles content. When the reporter asked him about Obama's intention to take money from the supposed rich, Joe, who is not rich, did not at first ask "How much" or "Who's giving" but "By what authority?"

That one word opens up the little red playbook of the totalitarian left. For the left can be defined as that political movement that seeks to destroy all subsidiary authorities, in the cause of some grand superauthority, like the dicatorship of the proletariat. It is why the left despises families. Oh, I don't mean that leftists do not love their children. Maybe they do; that's not the point. The point is that the left seeks to rob the family of its status as a natural, pre-political institution, with a natural authority of its own, an authority that the state must respect and sometimes even subserve. It is why the left derides the father. Oh, I don't mean that leftists slap their fathers into old folks' homes at the first opportunity. I mean that they hate the fatherhood of the father; he stands in their society-remaking path. They're not too fond of motherhood either, and for the same reasons. And the church. And the municipality. And traditions peculiar to a people. They'll allow us to worship God, silly fools that we are, so long as we keep it private -- which means, so long as nobody gets the idea that states and statesman and Really Smart People who want to run everything also stand under the judgment of God, and will have to answer for their deeds.

And the totalitarian tendencies of the left are in full sight in this campaign. Whatever you think of talk radio (and I think a range of things about it, depending on the talker), it sure beats the goosestepping print media and the hairsprayed and trussed-up kicklines, ever to the left, on the old television networks. But the left is not simply suggesting that talk radio be gagged. They're promising it. The threatened return of the Fairness Doctrine is the sort of thing I have seen quite a lot of in academe. One time, for example, renegade feminist Camille Paglia was invited to give a talk at Brown, a small community college across town from where I teach. She did, to a packed house. The next day, professors were snooping for a victim -- "Who was responsible for bringing that woman here!" And now, "Fox News has made me lose three points of my lead!" And "Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist!" Then we have the ACORN voter frauds. Then we have the Freedom of Choice Act, which Obama promises to sign, and which will remove from Christian doctors and nurses any protection for conscience; rather like Massachusetts' recent slamming of Boston's Catholic adoption agency. "Do it our way, or else" -- that is the totalitarian slogan, and that is simply the default position for the hard left. They make ol' Joe McCarthy look like a piker. The worst that you could say about McCarthy is that that ambitious and self-serving man tried to cast out demons with the weapons of Beelzebub. The left isn't trying to do that. They want to cast out all authorities in the name of Beelzebub. The Constitution? Just a document to be used to destroy rival authorities to the statist powers -- including, yes, the family (and that is how the "liberty" of abortion ought to be viewed). Beyond that? Nothing at all. Maybe a nice design with which to emboss the bathroom tissue in the halls of power.

The Tyranny of the Minority: How the Forced Recognition of Same-Sex “Marriage” Undermines a Free Society

By S. T. Karnick
Salvo Magazine

From the beginning, the debate over “same-sex marriage” has been one of those topsy-turvy issues in which the side that is truly tolerant and fair has been characterized as narrow-minded and oppressive, while the side that is intolerant and blatantly coercive has been depicted as open-minded and sympathetic.

Favoring government-enforced recognition of same-sex “marriage” is not, as the media invariably characterize it, a kindly, liberal-minded position, but instead a fierce, coercive, intolerant one. Despite their agonized complaints about the refusal of the majority of Americans to give in on the subject, those who advocate government recognition of same-sex “marriage” want to use coercion to deny other people their fundamental rights.

The issue, it’s important to remember, is not whether society will allow homosexuals to “marry.” They may already do so, in any church or other sanctioning body that is willing to perform the ceremony. There are, in fact, many organizations willing to do so: the Episcopal Church USA, the Alliance of Baptists, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Unity School of Christianity, the Unitarian Universalists, the Swedenborgian Church of North America, the Quakers, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, and the United Church of Christ, among others. Such institutions either explicitly allow the consecration or blessing of same-sex “marriages” or look the other way when individual congregations perform such ceremonies.

No laws prevent these churches from conducting marriage ceremonies—and nearly all Americans would agree that it is right for the government to stay out of a church’s decision on the issue. Further, any couple of any kind may stand before a gathering of well-wishers and pledge their union to each other, and the law will do nothing to prevent them. Same-sex couples, or any other combination of people, animals, and inanimate objects, can and do “marry” in this way. What the law in most states currently does not do, however, is force third parties—individuals, businesses, institutions, and so on—to recognize these “marriages” and treat them as if they were exactly the same as traditional marriages. Nor does it forbid anyone to do so.

An insurance company, for example, is free to treat a same-sex couple (or an unmarried two-sex couple) the same way it treats married couples, or not. A church can choose to bless same-sex unions, or not. An employer can choose to recognize same-sex couples as “married,” or not. As Richard Thompson Ford noted in Slate, “In 1992 only one Fortune 500 company offered employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners; today hundreds do.”

In short, individuals, organizations, and institutions in most states are currently free to treat same-sex unions as marriages, or not. This, of course, is the truly liberal and tolerant position. It means letting the people concerned make up their own minds about how to treat these relationships. But this freedom is precisely what the advocates of same-sex “marriage” want to destroy; they want to use the government’s power to force everyone to recognize same-sex unions as marriages whether they want to or not.

The effects of such coercion have already been felt in some places. Adoption agencies, for example, like any other organization, ought to be able to choose whether to give children to same-sex couples, or not. But in Massachusetts, where same-sex “marriage” has been declared legal, these agencies have been forced to accept applications from same-sex couples or go out of business.

Minority Rule

What’s at issue here is not whether people can declare themselves married and find other people to agree with them and treat them as such. No, what’s in contention is whether the government should force everyone to recognize such “marriages.” Far from being a liberating thing, the forced recognition of same-sex “marriage” is a governmental intrusion of monumental proportions.

Although pro-homosexual radicals continually refer to the forced recognition of same-sex “marriage” as a civil right, as well as a matter of liberating society from hidebound prejudices, such policies are actually the government-enforced imposition of a small group’s sexual values on a reluctant and indeed strongly resistant population. That’s why nearly all of the moves to legalize same-sex “marriage” have come from the courts, not the democratic process. After all, court cases would not be necessary if the public already agreed with the radicals.

This was made clear in the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the state constitution’s equal protection clauses mean that individuals have a fundamental “right to marry” whomever they choose and that gender restrictions in marriage are thus unconstitutional. The court, Republican-dominated and previously known as moderately conservative, voted by a slim 4­-3 margin that sexual orientation would have to be treated just like race and sex in the state’s laws. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Ronald M. George declared,

Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation. An individual’s sexual orientation—like a person’s race or gender—does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

The court ruled that the state’s law approving “domestic partnerships” for same-sex couples was not enough—only official recognition as marriage would do.

Note these words in the court’s decision: “Our state now recognizes.” Actually, the state did no such thing; the court did it for them. The decision struck down Proposition 22, a ballot measure approved by 61 percent of the state’s voters in the year 2000, which stated that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.” Thus, four judges decided to impose their personal views over the people’s clearly expressed will, shown powerfully in the state referendum. Nor does their decision reflect a changed social atmosphere. The issue will remain in contention through the November elections, as the ballot in California will include an initiative to amend the state constitution to prohibit the government from recognizing same-sex “marriages.”

What that would mean, of course, is not that Californians would be barred from “marrying” people of the same sex, but that they could not use the government to force other individuals, businesses, and institutions to recognize those “marriages.”

As this case shows, the people who seek to “impose their values” on others are those who support government recognition of same-sex “marriage,” not those who oppose it.

Moreover, it is not correct to argue that government recognition of two-sex marriages is unfair or oppressive. If proponents of same-sex “marriage” ask why the government should be allowed to require people to acknowledge traditional two-sex marriages, the answer is simple: It does not. The institutions of society acknowledge heterosexual marriages on the basis of historical and cultural preferences dating back millennia. The government didn’t decide this; society did. Government recognition of traditional marriage was not a change forced upon society, but rather a legal codification of what society had already established.

Moreover, even homosexuals agree that marriage is a valid institution. They confirm this powerfully by trying to alter the institution through force of law so that same-sex couples can be included in it. The key difference between traditional marriage and same-sex “marriage,” however, is that the government, in acknowledging heterosexual marriage, does not force anything on society; it merely effects the enforcement of a contract that all—or nearly all—people accept as valid and sensible. Same-sex “marriage,” by contrast, is not seen as such by most people; forcing individuals to recognize it is not the legal codification of an existing social reality, but instead a radical social change forced by a few on the many.

A Pew Research Center Survey released earlier this year noted in its title that “Most Americans Still Oppose Same-Sex Marriage.” The survey reported that 55 percent of Americans oppose “allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally,” while only 36 percent support such a policy. A table in the report noted that “Most Groups Oppose Gay Marriage,” though the study observed that poll respondents approved of allowing civil unions for same-sex couples by a 54­-42 percent margin. Clearly, this suggests that most Americans are willing to allow same-sex couples to formalize their relationships in some way, but they don’t want to be forced to change the definition of marriage to include them.

A Sea Change

Even fewer people would support same-sex “marriage” if the full implications of laws allowing them were widely known. A few days after the California Supreme Court decision, conservative columnist Dennis Prager noted just how sweeping and anti-democratic the decision was, saying, “Nothing imaginable—leftward or rightward—would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history.” Unless the decision is reversed by an amendment to the California or US Constitution, Prager argued, “four justices of the California Supreme Court will have changed American society more than any four individuals since Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison.”

Prager listed some of the social changes he foresees resulting from the court’s decision:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming—to do so would be declared “heterosexist,” morally equivalent to racist. . . . Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. . . .

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.

Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man’s finger—if they show only women’s fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians—i.e., those who believe in a divine scripture—will be marginalized.

Some might argue that Prager is indulging in hyperbole and will only cause unnecessary panic with these absurd hobgoblins, but it is difficult to see how the people of California would be able to stop sexual radicals from using the state’s courts to implement all of these changes—and more—if the decision is allowed to stand. Yet, ironically, Prager notes, this far-reaching, radical decision has been deemed by the press as the compassionate, liberal-minded position on the matter. The mind boggles at the thought of what oppression might look like.

The libertarian writer Jennifer Roback Morse likewise notes that same-sex “marriage” is not a reduction of government intrusion into private lives, but an immense expansion of it. Writing in the National Catholic Register, she observes,

Advocates of same-sex “marriage” insist that theirs is a modest reform: a mere expansion of marriage to include people currently excluded. But the price of same-sex “marriage” is a reduction in tolerance for everyone else, and an expansion of the power of the state.

Morse provides several examples that show how oppressive the same-sex “liberators” are in practice, including the following:

Recently, a Methodist organization in New Jersey lost part of its tax-exempt status because it refused to allow two lesbian couples to use their facility for a civil union ceremony. In Quebec, a Mennonite school was informed that it must conform to the official provincial curriculum, which includes teaching homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle. . . .

And recently, a wedding photographer in New Mexico faced a hearing with the state’s Human Rights Commission because she declined the business of a lesbian couple. She didn’t want to take photos of their commitment ceremony.

This list could be expanded and will only grow, as sexual radicals across the nation increasingly use the government to break down all resistance to their agenda. Recognizing the vast implications of a successful movement to disallow anyone from recognizing any difference between the sexes, Morse sees who the real victims of oppression would be:

Perhaps you think people have a natural civil right to marry the person of their choosing. But can you really force yourself to believe that wedding photography is a civil right?

Maybe you believe that same-sex couples are entitled to have children, somehow. But is any doctor they might encounter required to inseminate them?

As Morse and Prager both note, what advocates of government recognition of same-sex “marriage” are after is not “tolerance and respect,” but a forcible reordering of all of society along “gender-neutral” principles—and anyone who resists will face punishment by the government. In such an environment, it should hardly surprise us to see freedom of speech become a thing of the past.

Attitude Adjustments

An example of the suppression of dissent occurred in a debate last year in which the candidates for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination discussed issues related to homosexual rights. When Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel came out explicitly for forcing all of society to recognize same-sex “marriages,” and the audience erupted in cheers, the more prominent candidates kept their heads down and clearly tried to avoid making any big mistakes.

Two of them, however, were forced into Orwellian moments of self-abasement. Former Senator John Edwards felt compelled to apologize for once having said that he opposed same-sex “marriage” for religious reasons. He promised not to impose his “faith belief” on the American people—though he would apparently be willing to impose the radicals’ unbelief on all of society.

Even more revealingly, New Mexico Governor William Richardson, a strong supporter of the homosexualist agenda, blundered when asked whether homosexual behavior is a biological imperative or a choice. Richardson said, “It’s a choice.” Some people in the audience gasped audibly. This was potentially catastrophic for him because the great majority of homosexual activists claim that homosexual behavior is biological in origin.

Richardson’s campaign organization quickly issued a retraction of what he said in the debate. As Prager and Morse point out, this sort of forced “attitude adjustment” will become universal if the “same-sex marriage” agenda is embedded in the nation’s laws.

The question of whether the definition of marriage will be made by the free choices of society or by government fiat is the central issue in the “same-sex marriage” controversy. To be sure, those who argue that the government should not discriminate between traditional and same-sex couples can make their case seem principled and liberal-minded. The truth, however, is that those who favor forced recognition of same-sex “marriage” seek to suppress freedom, and those who oppose these ideas represent real liberty.

Still Illegal

Lost in the debate surrounding the forced recognition of same-sex “marriage” is that such unions are still very much illegal—and in every state of the union. Yes, it’s true that the California Supreme Court did rule that the prohibition of same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, as well as that the language in Proposition 22, which limited marriage to one man and one woman, must be excised from the statute. It’s just that the court had no authority to do the excising. According to the California Constitution, only the people within that state can revoke or amend an initiative statute, which is precisely what Proposition 22 is. And because 61.4 percent of California voters have already insisted that “only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California,” it is unlikely that the people will take such action any time soon. Thus, it was the court’s implication that its opinion had the force of law, not to mention Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to enforce that opinion despite having no legal authority to do so, that was actually unconstitutional, not the ban on same-sex marriage. Interestingly enough, the same problem plagues Massachusetts’ “legalization” of same-sex marriage by court ruling, which Governor Mitt Romney illegally enforced in 2004. In both states, gay marriage remains illegal, despite what the media may claim. Now if only we could get our government officials to fulfill their sworn obligation to the law.

The Coming of the Book

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

What are the major events in the history of salvation, according to Christianity? If you made a little diagram with stick figures, what would you have to include? The choosing of Abraham, of course. The giving of the law, and the whole Mosaic ministry of God redeeming his people from Egypt and making them his own special people. How about the ministry and rule of David as king in Israel, and the promise that his son would rule forever? And of course the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. This is the gospel message, this is what it means to be a Christian. These things are the central events in the history of salvation.

And then you would have to draw a scroll, or a book. Because even though the coming of the book is not the main event, it is nevertheless an event. The fact is that, having done all these things, God also recorded it, inspired the record, and superintended the inspiration of the record so that his people would have a book. So in that sense, the coming of the book is a major event in the history of salvation.

But it’s not the central event, and it’s subordinate. For contrast, consider other religious systems. Take Islam for instance: What is the central event for the Muslim faith? That the eternal word of God has been given to one authorized prophet. “There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet.” What is the founding of Islam as a distinct religion? It’s the coming of the Quran. That is the central event in the history of salvation for that religion.

Certainly we as Christians are a people of the book, but there is one way in which we cannot and should not compete with a religion like Islam in the race to be people of the book. It’s possible, believe it or not, to be too much a religion of a book: Where we have the coming of the Son of God, they have the coming of the book.

As another example, take Mormonism. What’s the central event in Mormon theology? It’s the revelation, on golden tablets, to one authorized prophet. Notice that,as with Islam, you’ve got a founder with a written revelation.

Now in contrast to these very book-centered religions, how does ours look? What does Christianity say about its book? What’s the central event of salvation history? Not the coming of the book, but the coming of the Word incarnate, a different sort of Word, and incarnate rather than in pages.

How did we get our book? We didn’t have one authorized prophet receive the entire book direct from God with no intermediaries. We didn’t find golden tablets in a cave and read them with special glasses. To speak piously about it, by comparison with these other religions on the market, it’s frankly a bit sloppy. We’ve got all these books, and they belong together, but compared to the kind of centralized quality control in these other religions, we don’t look competitive.

Don’t miss this: another important event in the history of salvation, according to Christianity, is the inspiration of Scripture. We do have a revelation, and God has not left us without a witness. Any idea of salvation includes within itself the idea of what we are saved from. If our problem were just ignorance of God, then salvation could be accomplished through the giving of information. Revelation would be salvation. But Christians know that we have a bigger problem than just ignorance or lack of understanding, and God has done more for our salvation than just reveal himself. We absolutely need the book. But we need more: we need what the book is about.

(I said something a lot like these words earlier this week at Calvary Church Santa Ana, as part of a series called Ask Anything. The mp3 is online, at least for now, here.)

Spare the Rod? America's Parents Just Won't Get With the Science

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

Alan E. Kazdin is a frustrated man, and it's America's parents who are frustrating him. These parents are, of all things, prone to use an occasional spanking in disciplining their children. Dr. Kazdin's great frustration is that these parents insist on doing what seems right to them, and thus they are ignoring or rejecting the fact that "science" shows that spankings don't work.

Dr. Kazdin is John M. Musser Professor of Psychology and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and director of the university's Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. Writing at Slate.com, Kazdin argues that parents just don't get it -- "The typical parent, when whacking a misbehaving child, doesn't pause to wonder: 'What does science have to say about the efficacy of corporal punishment?'" No kidding. Is the parent supposed to go review the scientific data before dealing with a disobedient child? Just how out of touch can the folks at Yale be?

Slate.com is one of the most interesting digital magazines yet to appear. It leans predictably leftward, but offers some of the brightest reportage to be found anywhere in today's journalism. Nevertheless, Kazdin's article, "Spare the Rod: Why You Shouldn't Hit Your Kids," reads more like a parody of an article than as a serious article in a serious magazine.

After acknowledging that parents do not pause to ask the science question before "whacking a misbehaving child," Kazdin concedes that most American parents admit to spanking and that most children and adolescents (85%) report having been spanked.

"Parents cite children's aggression and failure to comply with a request as the most common reasons for hitting them," Kazdin reports. But, he insists, science shows that spanking just doesn't work over time. Though spanking may produce an immediate change in the child's behavior, children are "endowed with wonderful flexibility and ability to learn" and adapt to punishments faster "than parents can escalate it."

Of course, that same flexibility and ability to learn could well explain why spanking does work, but that would not fit Kazdin's line of argument, to say the least.

Professor Kazdin provides an indictment of spanking that includes the charge that parents generally can't stop themselves from "stepping up from a mild, generally harmless dose to an excessive and harmful one." He even suggests that spanking is addictive . . . like smoking cigarettes.

Here is some of the scientific research Professor Kazdin wants America's parents to take into account:

The negative effects on children include increased aggression and noncompliance—the very misbehaviors that most often inspire parents to hit in the first place—as well as poor academic achievement, poor quality of parent-child relationships, and increased risk of a mental-health problem (depression or anxiety, for instance). High levels of corporal punishment are also associated with problems that crop up later in life, including diminished ability to control one's impulses and poor physical-health outcomes (cancer, heart disease, chronic respiratory disease). Plus, there's the effect of increasing parents' aggression, and don't forget the consistent finding that physical punishment is a weak strategy for permanently changing behavior.

All of this is put forth without even a single footnote or citation. We are just to take Professor Kazdin's word for all this. He argues that "the science" shows this and shows that, but anyone who reads scientific reports knows that there is nothing so clearly defined as "the science" about just about anything. The "findings" Kazdin summarizes in the paragraph above appear to be matters of correlation anyway. When a report suggests that spanking (or anything else) is "associated with" a list of ills and bad outcomes, realize that "associated with" is a very thin argument. Non-spanking may be just as or even more "associated with" these same issues, under the right conditions and described by the right definitions.

Professor Kazdin laments the fact that "most of us pay, at best, selective attention to science." He understands that scientists "have not done a good job of publicizing what they know about corporal punishment." Parents believe that spanking works, at least to some useful extent, and they reject what are presented as arguments based in what "the science" has to say against it.

Kazdin is simply infatuated with "the science." What case can be made against spanking? "It can be argued from the science," he assures. Research "consistently shows" that spanking does not work over time.

Kazdin wants spanking to be outlawed. He reports that 91 nations have banned spanking in the schools and 23 have banned corporal punishment even in the home -- generally by criminalizing parents who spank.

He also offers this news bulletin sure to attract the ire of America's parents:

Practically nobody in America knows or cares that the United Nations has set a target date of 2009 for a universal prohibition of violence against children that would include a ban on corporal punishment in the home.

Ah, so now parents are up against, not only "the science," but the United Nations as well. Kazdin does not call for any specific legislative provision that would ban spanking, but "we ought to be able to at least discuss it with each other like grownups." It is time to question "the primacy of rights that parents exercise in the home." Thanks for the warning.

Professor Kazdin's confidence in "the science" just demonstrates that scientists often have short memories. In all too many cases, what is considered "the science" in one generation is laughed off in the next.

In her important book, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children, Ann Hulbert traces the progression of conflicting advice offered by scientists to parents through the twentieth century. As she makes clear, these "experts" cannot even agree on the most basic issues. She lays out two opposite views of parenting that appear in the literature. The first argues that parents need to assert more authority; the second argues that parents should be more empathetic with their children. Popular theories based on what has been called "the science" swing on that pendulum. The "experts" almost never come back to admit they were wrong.

As Hulbert explains:

America's parenting experts, in short, have fared no better or worse than the rest of us in the quest for calm consistency in child-rearing technique and theory. The story of the popular advisors' search for clarity about children and for authority with mothers is marked by controversies, contradictions, and unintended consequences. Among the most ironic of these consequences has been to leave parents, teachers, policymakers, ministers, and the media -- to say nothing of the experts themselves -- convinced that expert counsel is precisely what it was not supposed to be: constantly shifting and conflicting, throwing both grown people and children here and there like balls.

We can safely assume that Professor Kazdin is genuinely concerned about America's children and their welfare, but he joins the ranks of those who would, like the proverbial desperate attorney, beg the jury to ignore what they can see with their own eyes. In this case, the jury represents the nation's parents -- and they are not buying this argument.

Christian parents have a special stake in this controversy, because the Bible speaks so directly to the use of corporal punishment and the necessity of disciplining disobedient children. Furthermore, Christian parents should feel a shiver go down the spine when the United Nations is invoked as the moral authority.

Professor Kazdin's article also reminds us of the limitations of science and the inadequacy of scientism as a worldview. There is no such authority as "the science," and the contradictory debris of now outdated scientific theories and "findings" should be sufficient and persuasive evidence of that fact.

I do agree with Professor Kazdin on this major point: "The typical parent, when whacking a misbehaving child, doesn't pause to wonder: 'What does science have to say about the efficacy of corporal punishment?'"

Perhaps some smart child will keep Professor Kazdin's article at hand, to be pulled out the next time mom or dad decides to spank. Nice try kid, but I wouldn't count on that working, either.

In Intellectual Neutral

By William Lane Craig
ReasonableFaith.org

Passionate Conviction, pp. 2-16. Ed. Wm. L. Craig and P. Copan. Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman and Holman, 2007. Used by permission.

A number of years ago, two books appeared that sent shock waves through the American educational community. The first of these, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, by E.D. Hirsch, documented the fact that large numbers of American college students do not have the basic background knowledge to understand the front page of a newspaper or to act responsibly as a citizen. For example, a quarter of the students in a recent survey thought Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during the Vietnam War. Two-thirds did not know when the Civil War occurred. One-third thought Columbus discovered the New World sometime after 1750. In a recent survey at California State University at Fullerton, over half the students could not identify Chaucer or Dante. Ninety percent did not know who Alexander Hamilton was, despite the fact that his picture is on every ten dollar bill.

These statistics would be funny if they weren't so alarming. What has happened to our schools that they should be producing such dreadfully ignorant people? Alan Bloom, who was an eminent educator at the University of Chicago and the author of the second book I referred to above, argued in his The Closing of the American Mind. that behind the current educational malaise lies the universal conviction of students that all truth is relative and, therefore, that truth is not worth pursuing. Bloom writes,

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4. These are things you don't think about. . . . That it is a moral issue for students is revealed by the character of their response when challenged—a combination of disbelief and indignation: "Are you an absolutist?," the only alternative they know, uttered in the same tone as . . . "Do you really believe in witches?" This latter leads into the indignation, for someone who believes in witches might well be a witch-hunter or a Salem judge. The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness—and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings—is the great insight of our times. . . . The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.1

Since there is no absolute truth, since everything is relative, the purpose of an education is not to learn truth or master facts—rather it is merely to acquire a skill so that one can go out and obtain wealth, power, and fame. Truth has become irrelevant.

Now, of course, this sort of relativistic attitude toward truth is antithetical to the Christian worldview. For as Christians we believe that all truth is God's truth, that God has revealed to us the truth, both in His Word and in Him who said, "I am the Truth." The Christian, therefore, can never look on the truth with apathy or disdain. Rather, he cherishes and treasures the truth as a reflection of God Himself. Nor does his commitment to truth make the Christian intolerant, as Bloom's students erroneously inferred; on the contrary, the very concept of tolerance entails that one does not agree with that which one tolerates. The Christian is committed to both truth and tolerance, for he believes in Him who said not only, "I am the Truth," but also, "Love your enemies."

Now at the time that these books were released, I was teaching in the Religious Studies department at a Christian liberal arts college. So I began to wonder: how much have Christian students been infected with the attitude that Bloom describes? How would my own students fare on one of E.D. Hirsch's tests? Well, how would they? I thought. Why not give them such a quiz? So I did.

I drew up a brief, general knowledge quiz about famous people, places, and things and administered it to two classes of about fifty sophomores. What I found was that although they did better than the general student population, still there were sizable portions of the group who could not identify—even with a phrase—some important names and events. For example, forty-nine percent could not identify Leo Tolstoy, the author of perhaps the world's greatest novel, War and Peace. To my surprise, 16 percent did not know who Winston Churchill was. One student thought he was one of the founding Fathers of our nation! Another identified him as a great revival preacher of a few hundred years ago! Twenty-two percent did not know what Afghanistan is, and 22 percent could not identify Nicaragua. Twenty percent did not know where the Amazon River is. Imagine!

They fared even worse with things and events. I was amazed that a whopping 67 percent could not identify the Battle of the Bulge. Several identified it as a dieter's problem. Twenty-four percent did not know what the Special Theory of Relativity is (mind you, just to identify it—even as, say; "a theory of Einstein"—not to explain it). Forty-five percent couldn't identify Custer's Last Stand—it was variously classed as a battle in the Revolutionary War or as a battle in the Civil War. And I wasn't really surprised that 73 percent did not know what the expression "Manifest Destiny" referred to.

So it became clear to me that Christian students have not been able to rise above the dark undertow in our educational system at the primary and secondary levels. This level of ignorance presents a real crisis for Christian colleges and seminaries.

But then an even more terrible fear began to dawn on me as I contemplated these statistics. If Christian students are this ignorant of the general facts of history and geography, I thought, then the chances are that they, and Christians in general, are equally or even more ignorant of the facts of our own Christian heritage and doctrine. Our culture in general has sunk to the level of biblical and theological illiteracy. A great many, if not most, people cannot even name the four Gospels—in a recent survey one person identified them as Matthew, Mark, and Luther! In another survey, Joan of Arc was identified by some as Noah's wife! The suspicion arose in my mind that the evangelical church is probably also caught somewhere higher up in this same downward spiral.

But if we do not preserve the truth of our own Christian heritage and doctrine, who will learn it for us? Non-Christians? That hardly seems likely. If the Church does not treasure her own Christian truth, then it will be lost to her forever. So how, I wondered, would Christians fare on a quiz over general facts of Christian history and doctrine?

Well, how would they? I now invite you to get out a pen and paper and take the following quiz yourself. (Go on, it'll only take a minute!) The following are items I think any mature Christian in our society ought to be able to identify. Simply provide some identifying phrase that indicates that you know what the item is. For example, if I say, "John Wesley," you might write: "the founder of Methodism" or "an eighteenth-century English revivalist."

Quiz

1. Augustine
2. Council of Nicea
3. Trinity
4. Two natures united in one person
5. Pantheism
6. Thomas Aquinas
7. Reformation
8. Martin Luther
9. Substitutionary atonement
10. Enlightenment

How did you do? If you're typical of the audiences to whom I've given this quiz, probably not too well. If that is the case, you might be tempted to react to this quiz defensively: "Who needs to know all this stuff anyway? This junk isn't important. All that really counts is my walk with Christ and my sharing Him with others. Who cares about all this other trivia?"

I truly hope that will not be your reaction, for that will close you off to self-improvement. This little exercise will have been of no profit to you. You will have learned nothing from it.

But there's a second, more positive reaction. You may see, perhaps for the first time in your life, that here is a need in your life for you to become intellectually engaged as a Christian, and you may resolve to do something about it. This is a momentous decision. You will be taking a step which millions of American Christians need to take.

No one has issued a more forceful challenge to Christians to become intellectually engaged than did Charles Malik, former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, in his address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. Malik emphasized that as Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. Our churches are filled with people who are spiritually born again, but who still think like non-Christians. Mark his words well:

I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy.2

Malik went on to say:

It will take a different spirit altogether to overcome this great danger of anti-intellectualism. For example, I say this different spirit, so far as philosophy alone—the most important domain for thought and intellect—is concerned, must see the tremendous value of spending an entire year doing nothing but poring intensely over the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle, or three years over the City of God of Augustine. But if a start is made now on a crash program in this and other domains, it will take at least a century to catch up with the Harvards and Tübingens and the Sorbonnes—and by then where will these universities be?3

What Malik clearly saw is the strategic position occupied by the university in shaping Western thought and culture. Indeed, the single most important institution shaping Western society is the university. It is at the university that our future political leaders, our journalists, our lawyers, our teachers, our scientists, our business executives, our artists, will be trained. It is at the university that they will formulate or, more likely, simply absorb the worldview that will shape their lives. And since these are the opinion-makers and leaders who shape our culture, the worldview that they imbibe at the university will be the one that shapes our culture.

Why is this important? Simply because the gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the cultural milieu in which one lives. A person raised in a cultural milieu in which Christianity is still seen as an intellectually viable option will display an openness to the Gospel which a person who is secularized will not. For the secular person you may as well tell him to believe in fairies or leprechauns as in Jesus Christ! Or, to give a more realistic illustration, it is like a devotee of the Hare Krishna movement approaching you on the street and inviting you to believe in Krishna. Such an invitation strikes us as bizarre, freakish, even amusing. But to a person on the streets of Delhi, such an invitation would, I assume, appear quite reasonable and cause for reflection. I fear that evangelicals appear almost as weird to persons on the streets of Bonn, Stockholm, or Toronto as do the devotees of Krishna.

It is part of the broader task of Christian scholarship to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the Gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women. Therefore, the Church has a vital stake in raising up Christian scholars who will help to create a place at the university for Christian ideas. The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked as irrational or obsolete, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders, have absorbed that viewpoint.

This is a war we cannot afford to lose. The great Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen warned on the eve of the Fundamentalist Controversy that if the Church loses the intellectual battle in one generation, then evangelism would become immeasurably more difficult in the next:

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root.4

The root of the obstacle is to be found in the university, and it is there that it must be attacked. Unfortunately, Machen's warning went unheeded, and biblical Christianity retreated into the intellectual closets of Fundamentalism, from which it has only recently begun to re-emerge. The war is not yet lost, and it is one which we must not lose: souls of men and women hang in the balance.

So what are evangelicals doing to win this war? Until recently, very little indeed. Malik asked pointedly,

Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular or naturalistic or atheistic scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas?
. . . For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.5

These words hit like a hammer. Evangelicals really have been living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. Most prominent evangelical scholars tend to be very big fish in a very small pond. Our influence extends little beyond the evangelical subculture. We tend to publish exclusively with evangelical presses, and therefore our books are likely to go unread by non-evangelical scholars; and instead of participating in the standard professional societies, we are active instead in the evangelical professional societies. As a result, we effectively put our light under a bushel and have little leavening effect for the gospel in our professional fields. In turn, the intellectual drift of the culture at large continues to slide, unchecked, deeper into secularism.

We desperately need Christian scholars who can, as Malik said, compete with non-Christian thinkers in their fields of expertise on their own terms of scholarship. It can be done. There is, for example, a revolution going on right now in the field of philosophy, which, as Malik noted, is the most important domain for thought and intellect, since it is foundational to every other discipline at the university. Christian philosophers have been coming out of the closet and defending the truth of the Christian worldview with philosophically sophisticated arguments in the finest secular journals and professional societies. The face of American philosophy has been changed as a result.

Fifty years ago philosophers widely regarded talk about God as literally meaningless, as mere gibberish, but today no informed philosopher could take such a viewpoint. In fact, many of America's finest philosophers today are outspoken Christians. To give you some feel for the impact of this revolution, let me quote an article which appeared in the fall of 2001 in the journal Philo lamenting what the author called "the desecularization of academia that evolved in philosophy departments since the late 1960s." The author, himself a prominent atheist philosopher, writes,

Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism . . . began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians.
. . . in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, "academically respectable" to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today. . . .
God is not "dead" in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.6

This is the testimony of a prominent atheist philosopher to the change that has taken place before his eyes in American philosophy. I think that he is probably exaggerating when he estimates that one-quarter to one-third of American philosophers are theists, but what his estimates do reveal is the perceived impact of Christian philosophers upon this field. Like Gideon's army, a committed minority of activists can have an impact far out of proportion to their numbers. The principal error that he makes is calling philosophy departments God's "last stronghold" at the university. On the contrary, philosophy departments are a beachhead, from which operations can be launched to impact other disciplines at the university for Christ.

The point is that the task of desecularization is not hopeless or impossible, nor need significant changes take as long to achieve as one might think. It is this sort of Christian scholarship which represents the best hope for the transformation of culture that Malik and Machen envisioned, and its true impact for the cause of Christ will only be felt in the next generation, as it filters down into popular culture.

So it can be done, if we are willing to put in the hard work. Machen observed that in his day "many would have the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents" instead of confusing students "with a lot of German names unknown outside the walls of the university." But to the contrary, Machen insisted, it is essential that Christian scholars be alert to the power of an idea before it has reached popular formulation. Scholarly procedure, he said,

is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.7

Like Malik, Machen also believed that "the chief obstacle to the Christian religion today lies in the sphere of the intellect"8 and that objections to Christianity must be attacked in that sphere. "The church is perishing to-day through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it."9

What is ironic about the mentality which says that our seminaries should produce pastors, not scholars, is that it is precisely our future pastors, not just our future scholars, who need to be intellectually engaged and to receive this scholarly training. Machen's article was originally given as a speech entitled "The Scientific Preparation of the Minister." A model for us here ought to be a man like John Wesley, a Spirit-filled revivalist and at the same time an Oxford-educated scholar.10 Wesley's vision of a pastor is remarkable: a gentleman, skilled in the Scriptures and conversant with history, philosophy, and the science of his day.

How do the pastors graduating from our seminaries compare to this model? Church historian and theologian David Wells has called our contemporary generation of pastors "the new disablers" because they have abandoned the traditional role of the pastor as a broker of truth to his congregation and replaced it with a new managerial model drawn from the professional world which emphasizes leadership abilities, marketing, and administration. As a result the Church has produced a generation of Christians for whom theology is irrelevant and whose lives outside the church do not differ practically from those of atheists. These new managerial pastors, complains Wells, "are failing the Church and even disabling it. They are leaving it vulnerable to all the seductions of modernity precisely because they have not provided the alternative, which is a view of life centered in God and his truth."11 We need to recover the traditional model which men like Wesley exemplified.

But finally, it is not just Christian scholars and pastors who need to be intellectually engaged if the Church is to make an impact in our culture. Christian laymen, too, must become intellectually engaged. Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. J. P. Moreland in his challenging book Love Your God with All Your Mind has called them "empty selves." An empty self is inordinately individualistic, infantile, and narcissistic. It is passive, sensate, busy and hurried, incapable of developing an interior life. In what is perhaps the most devastating passage in his book, Moreland asks us to envision a church filled with such people. He asks,

What would be the theological understanding, . . .the evangelistic courage, the. . . cultural penetration of such a church?… If the interior life does not really matter all that much, why spend the time . . .trying to develop an . . . intellectual, spiritually mature life? If someone is basically passive, he or she will just not make the effort to read, preferring instead to be entertained. If a person is sensate in orientation, music, magazines filled with pictures, and visual media in general will be more important than mere words on a page or abstract thoughts. If one is hurried and distracted, one will have little patience for theoretical knowledge and too short . . . an attention span to stay with an idea while it is being carefully developed. . .
And if someone is overly individualistic, infantile, and narcissistic, what will that person read, if he or she reads at all? . . .Christian self-help books that are filled with self-serving content, . . . slogans, simplistic moralizing, a lot of stories and pictures, and inadequate diagnosis of issues that place no demand on the reader. Books about Christian celebrities. . . . what will not be read are books that equip people to . . . develop a well-reasoned, theological understanding of the Christian religion, and fill their role in the broader kingdom of God . . . [Such] a church . . . will become . . . impotent to stand against the powerful forces of secularism that threaten to bury Christian ideas under a veneer of soulless pluralism and misguided scientism. In such a context, the church will be tempted to measure her success largely in terms of numbers—numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to empty selves. In this way, . . . the church will become her own grave digger; her means of short-term "success" will turn out to be the very thing that marginalizes her in the long run.12

What makes this description so devastating is that we don't have to imagine such a church; rather this IS an apt description of far too many American evangelical churches today.

Sometimes people try to justify their lack of intellectual engagement by asserting that they prefer having a "simple faith." But here I think we must distinguish between a childlike faith and a childish faith. A childlike faith is a whole-souled trust in God as one's loving Heavenly Father, and Jesus commends such a faith to us. But a childish faith is an immature, unreflective faith, and such a faith is not commended to us. On the contrary, Paul says, "Do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature" (1 Cor. 14.20 RSV). If a "simple" faith means an unreflective, ignorant faith, then we should want none of it. In my own life, I can testify that, after many years of study, my worship of God is deeper precisely because of, and not in spite of, my philosophical and theological studies. In every area I have intensely researched—creation, the resurrection, divine omniscience, divine eternity, divine aseity—my appreciation of God's truth and my awe of His personhood have become more profound. I am excited about future study because of the deeper appreciation I am sure it will bring me of God's personhood and work. Christian faith is not an apathetic faith, a brain-dead faith, but a living, inquiring faith. As Anselm put it, ours is a faith that seeks understanding.

Furthermore, the results of being in intellectual neutral extend far beyond one's own self. If Christian laymen do not become intellectually engaged, then we are in serious danger of losing our youth. In high school and college, Christian teenagers are intellectually assaulted by every manner of non-Christian philosophy conjoined with an overwhelming relativism. As I speak in churches around the country, I constantly meet parents whose children have lost their faith because there was no one in the church to answer their questions. In fact, George Barna estimates that 40% of the youth in our churches, once they leave for college, will never darken the door of a church again.

There can be no question that the church has dropped the ball in this area. But the structures are in place in the church for remedying this problem, if only we will make use of them. I am speaking, of course, of adult Sunday school programs. Why not begin to utilize Sunday school classes to offer laymen serious instruction in such subjects as Christian doctrine, church history, New Testament Greek, apologetics, and so forth? Think of the potential for change! Why not?

I believe that our culture can be changed. I am excited about the renaissance in Christian philosophy in my generation, which bodes well for the next. Whether God is calling you to become a Christian scholar on the front lines of intellectual battle, a Christian pastor to serve as a broker of truth to your congregation, or a Christian parent or layman who is always ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you, we have the awesome opportunity of being agents of cultural change in Christ's name. For the Church's sake, for your own sakes, for your children's sake, do not squander this opportunity! So if, up until now, you've just been coasting, idling in intellectual neutral, now is the time to get it in gear!

Answers to the Quiz

1. Church Father (354-430) and the author of The City of God who emphasized God's unmerited grace.The Roman Catholic monk (1483,1546) who started the Protestant Reformation and was the founder of Lutheranism.
2. The church council that in 325 officially ratified the doctrine of the equal deity of the Father and the Son as opposed to the view held by the Arian heretics.
3. The doctrine that in God there are three persons in one being.
4. The doctrine enunciated at the Council of Chalcedon (451) affirming the true deity and true humanity of Christ.
5. The view that the world and God are identical.
6. A medieval Catholic theologian (1225-1274) and the author of Summa Theologica, whose views have been determinative for traditional Roman Catholic theology.
7. The origin of Protestantism in the sixteenth century in the efforts of men such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli to reform the doctrine and practice of the Roman Catholic church; it emphasized justification by grace through faith alone and the exclusive authority of the Bible.
8. The Roman Catholic monk (1483-1546) who started the Protestant Reformation and was the founder of Lutheranism.
9. The doctrine that by His death on our behalf and in our place Christ reconciled us to God.
10. The intellectual revolt in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries against the authority of church and monarchy in the name of human autonomy; also called the Age of Reason.

Endnotes

1 Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 25-26.

2 Charles Malik, "The Other Side of Evangelism," Christianity Today, November 7, 1980, 40.

3 Ibid.

4 J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Culture," Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913): 7.

5 Malik, "Other Side of Evangelism," 40.

6 Quentin Smith, "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism" Philo 4/2 (2001).

7 Machen, "Christianity and Culture," 6.

8 Ibid., 10.

9 Ibid., 13.

10 John Wesley, Works 6: 217-31.

11 David F. Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 253.

12 J. P. Moreland, Love Your God with All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: Nav Press, 1997), 93-94.

God on Mammon: theology for the credit crunch

What faith says about finance: in Islam, Judaism and Christianity

By Bess Twiston Davies
Times Online

It's been a hell of a week for God and for Mammon. "The love of money is the root of all evil" Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York reminded City bankers on Wednesday, adding, rather presciently as it turned out, "We have all worshipped it. No one is guiltless".

Indeed, less than 24 hours after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York had ripped into global capitalism, decrying the greed of "City robbers," it emerged that the investments controlled by the Church itself were involved in short selling – because its stock was lent to enable short selling to happen and because it owned shares in Man Group, a large hedge fund manager. As a morality tale, it was almost worthy of Chaucer’s Pardoner. Radix Malorum est Cupiditas: the Root of all Evil is Money he preaches in The Canterbury Tales, making, in the process, a tidy profit.

Yet for all the justified charges of hypocrisy, this weeks’ battles between Church and City have, if little else, turned the spotlight on God and the question of what, if anything, the world’s main faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity have to say about finance, debt and spirituality.

The answer is perhaps most obvious in Islam – specific verses of the Qur’an expressly forbid the charging or paying of interest says Sultan Choudhury, Commercial Director of the Islamic Bank of Britain. “Usury is a very big sin in Islam, one verse in the Qu'ran forbids it and another says that God will declare war on those who undertake it,” he explains.

Islamic banking services are designed to reflect this, he says: “The ban on usury means you cannot make money from money and for legal (as per Shariah) trading a real transaction has to take place."

In practice, what this means is that "a shopkeeper, for instance, is allowed to buy rice and to sell it on to the customer at a profit because a physical trading activity has taken place. What it does not allow is for Adam to give Mary £100 and demand £101 back the following week without a real asset or service being exchanged.”

Furthermore: “Islam also imposes ethical restrictions on what you trade and how you trade. There are detailed rules about transactions. Long before consumer legislation came, Islam said that there must be no deception involved in a transaction, that a transaction must be transparent for the consumer," Choudhury explains. He adds "Another very strong principle is that a transaction has to be linked to a real asset.

" When you look at the credit crunch, you’ve got banks buying paper, which may represent land in Florida, or housing but they are not sure of the underlying real asset. There is a divorce between the monetary system and the real system. By and large, speculation and hedge funds are prohibited in Islam, as is short-selling. You may only sell what you possess," explains Choudhury, drawing a parallel with the recent crisis: "In this case, people are selling things which they have never owned, which is what has been happening with speculators in HBOS. The problems we’ve had are unlikely to happen within an Islamic banking system.”

Usury was once strictly condemned by the Christian Church too: laws enforced during the Lateran Councils of 1215 specified that no one who lent money could enjoy a Christian burial, a ban which virtually forced all money lending to be executed by Jews, who, as a result, have been frequently and unfairly stigmatised for usury, with some websites today even blaming them for the current financial crisis. By the 16th century, despite issuing three papal bulls against usury between 1569 and 1586, the papacy relented, lifting an outright ban on the practice. However, greed, and the charging of exorbitant interest, are still prohibited, says Father Peter Harris, Roman Catholic Chaplain to Canary Wharf. He says Christ used the forgiveness of debt as a frequent metaphor for the forgiveness of sin, explaining: "The essential economy of the Church is debt-free as Jesus has paid the debt. We are the benefactors of God's freely given love through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus."

The cancellation of debt is also integral to Jewish tradition, says Rabbi Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue, who is the Chair of the Assembly of Reform Rabbis UK. “Deuteronomy includes the Jubilee idea of all financial debts being annulled and land sold reverting to the original owners every fifty years. However, this was seen as an ideal rather than a practicality, and there is no record of it happening. Jewish groups have been heavily involved in the Drop the Debt campaigns as a matter of religious principle.”

Unlike Islam, Jews do not attach any spiritual stigma to loaning money with interest, he adds: "It has always been a puzzle to Jews that in some other faiths the idea of wealth is regarded as shameful, while lending money with interest is seen as sinful,” Romain says. He adds “ For Jews, neither are intrinsically wrong, although serious question marks do arise if the method of earning money is dubious or if the interest charged to others is excessive.”

Conversely, there is no objection to Jews receiving credit, which is also seen as a normal mechanism of business and free of any religious strictures. However, it is subject to the caveat that if there is no intention of repaying the debt - or clearly no ability to do so - then taking a loan amounts to stealing and transgresses that commandment."

So is money in itself wrong? No, says Kit Dollard, a former businessman and the co-author of Doing Business with Benedict: the Rule of St Benedict and Business Management, a guide to finance based on the 6th century rule of the Italian saint. “St Benedict, while not commenting directly on money, does say that “God is present everywhere”, that those who use their creative gifts in the monastery’s workshops should exercise “proper humility” and when charging for their products should “avoid any taint of avarice.” It is more about good stewardship – how and where we spend our money,” he explains.

Spending, however, is a conscience issue argues Father Harris: “Although the right to work, to support oneself and one’s family is part of Church teaching, so is sharing. How vital is it really to own a Porsche in London? When I first arrived in Canary Wharf, I would see Audi and Ferrari car dealers set up their stands at bonus time, and bankers literally hand over their bonus cheques.”

For the Right Rev Bernard Longley, the auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of London, the Biblical parable of the Talents – where a master asks his servants about the use to which they have put the gifts he has given them – offers pertinent reflection for those impacted by the market crisis.

After celebrating a Mass in Canary Wharf, he explained: “ The Church teaches that the mission of baptised Christians is to witness to faith in the midst of the world. You could not look for a better example of that than here in Canary Wharf. In the midst of all the commercial activities, these Christians who have just come to Mass and work here believe in grace – which is something offered for nothing. That influences their personal and professional relations. These are people who know to use what is given to them as gifts received.”

So what exactly can faith offer depressed bankers in the credit crisis? “Hope” says Bishop Longley. Katalina Reynolds-Carryl, a regular worshipper at the weekly Wharf Mass agrees. An analyst with the global finance managers, State Street Corporation, her company has been directly impacted by the recent market turmoil:

“What happened to Lehmans has had an impact on our business and we felt the threats to AIG in a big way. To an extent you have to put yourself in the Lord’s hands,” she says. “But what can you do? You can’t worry about every little thing. For me, being able to come here once a week [ to Mass ] is a sanity check. People often try to book meetings during the lunch hour but I miss enough lunch hours and work enough weekends to justify taking thirty minutes out of my week once a week to come here. This is my time. It is a moment of peace.”

On Monday, the Church of England posted a prayer for the debt-trapped on its website, which calls on God to be a "tower of strength" amid the "shifting sands" of the current economic climate. By Thursday it had called for a stringent review of financial regulations, and the Archbishop of Canterbury had suggested that, at least in part, Marx may have had a point in his critique of Capitalism.

Economic liberalisation in itself is not to blame, claims the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Speaking on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day on Friday he said: "Markets remain the best way we know of harnessing human creativity for the benefit of all. Economic liberalisation has taken 500 million people out of poverty in China, and 130 million in India. They're also the best antidote to war. As Montesquieu pointed out in the eighteenth century, when two nations come into contact with one another, they can either fight or trade. If they fight, both lose; if they trade, both gain."

What is both "wrong" and "unacceptable" the Chief Rabbi argues is rather "the unbridled pursuit of short term gain at the expense of long term economic health, financial greed at the cost of moral responsibility. "

One of the Chief Rabbi's first initiatives on taking office was to found the Jewish Association of Business Ethics. This now offers its programme, Markets and Morals, to all British schools. He says: "This summer, representatives of all the faiths in Britain marched together with the Archbishop of Canterbury in support of the Millennium Development Goals. Markets need morals. Trade needs responsibility. God's gifts must be for the benefit of all.” .

Will the current crisis, wonders Kit Dollard make people “more humble or more angry? This of course varies as to how you have been affected and where you see the money coming from in the first place."