More Evidence for Constant Constants

By Dr. Jeff Zweerink
Reasons To Believe

Over the last decade, RTB scholars have written numerous articles highlighting discoveries that demonstrate the constancy of the laws of physics. Discoveries demonstrating this characteristic of the universe affirm the Bible’s description of creation (e.g. Jeremiah 33:25–26). One specific constant is garnering significant coverage. The fine-structure constant, α, governs the strength of the electromagnetic force. As usually expressed by physicists, α depends on the speed of light (c), Planck’s constant (h), and the charge on an electron (e)—so the stability of α implies stability in the other three.

Astronomers found another way to test for variability in α by looking at spectra from white dwarfs—objects with masses similar to the Sun but dimensions closer to Earth’s. The compact nature of white dwarfs means that atoms near the surface experience gravitational fields more than 10,000 times stronger than those on Earth’s surface. The increased gravity could cause unexpected changes in α, but recent measurements limit variations to smaller than one part in 10,000.¹ This study produced similar limits as previous research, but improvements in spectral line values as determined in the laboratory should increase the sensitivity of these calculations by two orders of magnitude.

New constraints on α need not require the use of telescopes and exotic objects out in the universe. The behavior of electrons in atoms found here on Earth also probes variations in α. For two years, scientists measured the frequencies of two specific atomic transitions of the element dysprosium. Based on this data, the researchers showed that ααvaried by no more than one part in 10^-16 per year (or one part in 100,000 over the history of the universe).² Using a similar experimental setup, the group also constrained violations of special and general relativity (specifically Lorentz invariance and Einstein’s equivalence principle) to one part in 10^-17 and one part in 10^-8, respectively.³

These measurements add to the growing body of evidence that we live in a universe governed by constant laws of physics, just like the universe described in the Bible.

Endnotes:

1. J. C. Berengut et al., “Limits on the Dependence of the Fine-Structure Constant on Gravitational Potential from White-Dwarf Spectra,” Physical Review Letters (July 5, 2013): 010801.
2. N. Leefer et al., “New Limits on Variation of the Fine-Structure Constant Using Atomic Dysprosium,” Physical Review Letters 111 (August 9, 2013): 060801.
3. M. A. Hohensee et al., “Limits on Violations of Lorentz Symmetry and the Einstein Equivalence Principle Using Radio-Frequency Spectroscopy of Atomic Dysprosium,” Physical Review Letters 111 (August 2, 2013): 050401.

Christopher Hitchens, the Mission of Desiring God, and God's Word About Death

By John Piper
Desiring God

Three things came together in the last thirty-six hours to create this post. The death of Christopher Hitchens, the Desiring God Board meeting Thursday, and the word of God.

1. Christopher Hitchens died Thursday night. He was, perhaps, the most aggressive of the “new atheists.” I am sobered and made quiet by the probability (though we do not know his final hours) that he is in torment today awaiting his final judgment and the lake of fire.
2. Also on Thursday the Desiring God Board clarified and refined the Ultimate Goal, the Mission, and the Core Strategy of Desiring God. The Mission of Desiring God is to help people everywhere understand and embrace the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
3. Pondering these two events in connection to God’s word I asked myself: How shall we be satisfied in God in the face of, and the hour of, our death?

There are more answers than we can give here. But here are some. I can be satisfied in God at the moment of my death. . . .

Because the sting of death is removed by the work of Christ.

O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55–57)

He satisfied the law’s demand for my perfection and for my punishment. I may  weep, but not because of the sting.

Because Jesus stands to greet us.

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. . . . And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. (Acts 7:55–60)

The satisfaction in Christ can be so deep that all revenge vanishes.

Because death is the last great occasion in this life for glorifying God

Jesus said to Peter: Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. (John 21:18–19)

Death is not after a life of glorifying God. It is our last supremely meaningful, God-glorifying assignment.

Because the Spirit of glory and of God will rest on us in our final crisis.

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:14)

I have often feared that my present faith would be inadequate for a time of torture. But I infer from this verse a precious truth: God comes to his own in the hour of final trial and rests on them with the Spirit and the glory so that we are able to endure.

Because the hairs of your head are all numbered and you out-value the unforgotten birds.

I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Luke 12:4–7)

Fear God, not death. For in the fear of God, there is nothing to fear. Fear not what displeasing man will mean, but fear what failing to trust God will mean.

Because in death not a hair of your head will perish.

Some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. (Luke 21:17–18)

Even if beheaded, not a hair will be lost. We are held in his hands and raised more whole than when we fell asleep.

Because you have passed from death to life and will not come into judgment.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (John 5:24)

As we die we say: I am not going to judgment. My judgment happened 2,000 years ago. I am going home.

Because Jesus is the resurrection and you never die.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25–26)

There is a sense in which we die. But most essentially, most personally, we simply do not die. There is no millisecond in which our fellowship with God is broken.

Because death will not separate you from the love of God.

I am sure that neither death nor life . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romams 8:38–39)

We are inseparable from God’s love for reasons more solid than the pillars of the universe. That is the point of Romans 8:29–39

Because to die is gain — it is to be with Christ more fully and more intimately.

To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (Philippians 1:21–23)

More of Christ is superior treasure than all that we leave behind.

Because Jesus is the Lord of the dead and the living.

To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” (Romans 14:7–9)

Not the Lord of the living only. But of the dead. Which means the dead are not dead. For God cannot be the God of the dead (Matthew 22:32).

Reclaiming Reason from Atheism

By Katie Galloway
Reason To Believe

Does atheism have a true monopoly on reason? In my conversations with nonbelievers, I’ve found that probing deeper into the atheistic worldview exposes a key weakness in that perspective and provides an opportunity to demonstrate Christianity’s solid footing in reason.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 423/277.

When I ask my unbelieving friends “Why are you an atheist?” they generally respond with something like “Because there is no God.” I ask them to dig a little deeper to answer my original question.

Generally, a diatribe against religion emerges. Believers are accused of being a bunch of hypocrites who oppress people with their rules while religions are painted in broad strokes as ridiculous superstitions and crutches for weak-minded people. Many claim that belief in God is irrational. From my experience, the atheist asserts that humanity has evolved beyond these irrational impulses and structures, now seeing religion for the garbage it is.

Why Atheism?

My next question is, “Okay, but why choose atheism?”

After all, a lack of faith comes with distinct disadvantages. For example, studies show that people with no faith are more likely than their religious counterparts to suffer from depression and to commit suicide.¹ Besides that (or perhaps at the root of that), atheism doesn’t provide any sense of meaning or purpose for life because everything will end with total annihilation.

Even if atheists argue that we can assign meaning to our lives, once the Sun burns out and the universe goes to heat death what is left? What will be the purpose of striving to not believe in superstition? What will be the purpose of helping other people? Why not just spend all your time throwing pebbles into the sea instead? In the end, such an activity will mean as much as the greatest acts of philanthropy. Pragmatically, wouldn’t it be better to be deluded and happy for this brief, meaningless time?

Nonbelievers often answer that they choose atheism because it’s true. Further, pragmatism is not a good test for truth, which I concede. But is truth really worth possibly sacrificing health, happiness, and meaning? Here some opinions diverge, but most atheists would say that truth is of the utmost importance in dictating their worldview.

“Alright,” I reply, “if truth is so important, why is it that only a small sliver of people ever find it?” My familiarity with scientists may bias this response, but I think most atheists would say that people believe in God because humanity has evolved to believe in God. In the past, religion served a useful function in promoting survival by bringing order to communities and existential motivation to mankind.

Thus, over 90 percent of the world population today suffers from the effects of this grand evolutionary delusion. Only the free-thinkers, the “brights,” have figured out how to get beyond the rubbish of mysticism programmed into our genes through the evolutionary process.

But if it’s true that the human brain is wired to believe in something that is false, then the brain is demonstrably unreliable for discerning truth. How then can atheists trust that their brain has found the truth? Why are they free from the mental subroutines programmed via evolution? How can they be certain that their brain finds truth, not just in this case, but ever? As recently highlighted by Kenneth Samples, atheism’s very assumptions about the world guarantee that we cannot know truth. We have become prisoners of our brain and the evolutionary processes that built it. Reason has been reduced to a molecular pool game with proteins and chemicals whacking about through neural circuitry, generating pictures, colors, and sensations.

While having a molecular pool game governing your decisions may sound fun for a bit, it precludes any master-of-my-own-destiny claims to independence or ownership of achievements, capacities, or ideas. After all, you don’t own your ideas, choices, achievements or fate; that’s just the way the balls bounce.

The Christian Alternative

Bereft of the certainty of reason and truth that results from a godless worldview, it seems better for the atheist to seek an alternative. In his book C. S. Lewis’ Case for the Christian Faith, Richard Purtill offers the biblical perspective on reason and its origins (emphasis added):

One way of getting a preliminary insight into Lewis’ argument [from reason] is to ask whether nature is a product of mind or mind is a product of nature. If God created nature, as Christians believe, then nature is understandable by reason because it is a product of reason.²

Christianity offers that man is made in the image of God and from this we gather that our mind is formed in likeness to God’s mind. Thus, we have a reason for our reason which is Jesus Christ, the creator of the universe, Earth, and our mind. Indeed the apostle John describes how “the Word” (logos, which can also be translated as “reason”) was with God in the beginning, how reason formed all of nature, and how the incarnate Word came to Earth.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–4, 14)

The idea of Christ as the Word is further refined in John 14:6 where Jesus describes Himself as “the way and the truth and the life.” Here Jesus, reason incarnate, properly claims primacy over truth and life, highlighting how truth and life flow from reason.

Conversely, atheism fails to provide hope, a reason for living, a reason for meaning, or a reason for reason at all. With such a hopeless doctrine for life or truth, I hope atheists will consider reclaiming their reason by exploring the rich doctrines of Christianity that celebrate reason and hope.

With the Current, Not Across It

By Fred Sanders
The Scriptorium

I’ve stopped saying “Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission.” Here’s why:

When I teach about the Great Commission (Matt 28:18-20), I underline its importance by showing that these are the last words Jesus speaks at the end of the gospel of Matthew. I love to explore how ideas and motifs from the beginning of the gospel are fulfilled here: the angel tells us at the beginning of Matthew that Jesus’ name will be Immanuel, God with us, and here at the end Jesus assures us, “I am with you always.” I love to point out that the language of “the Father and the Son” in the Great Commission builds on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 11 (“No one knows the Father except the Son,” etc.).

The Great Commission, especially with its ringing trinitarian formulation, sometimes strikes us as a surprise ending to the gospel, but in fact it’s a fabulous consummation of leading ideas in the book. It’s how the gospel of Matthew ends with a bang. To see this is to see that all 28 chapters are part of the trinitarian gospel message that finally comes to articulation at the end.

Over the years of teaching on this passage, I have also developed a habit of saying that these are the last words that Jesus says before he ascends into heaven. It sounds more dramatic to put it that way: that his death and resurrection are behind him, he has spent 40 days with the disciples, and is now going to the Father. And his final words are the command to make disciples.

But here’s the problem: When I put it that way, I jump from Matthew to Luke. I cut the lines of argument that Matthew has carefully laid out, or I tangle them with the ascension story that is so crucial in another gospel, Luke’s gospel.

How bad is it to do that? I don’t know. 

No, I mean I really don’t know, it’s beyond me. I can name and describe a few of the dynamics of Matthew. But I can never be sure I’ve seen everything, because it’s holy, and deep, and written by two authors (one human, one divine) who are way ahead of me.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that Matthew does not end his gospel with the story of the ascension. His gospel is about God being with us in Christ, and it ends with… God being with us in Christ. He stands there and says, “I am with you always.” Wouldn’t it be a little silly if he had said this and then had flown away? Wouldn’t that be the wrong way to conclude? Wouldn’t that be a worse ending for a gospel that has emphasized how God is present among us in the person of Jesus? Doesn’t Matthew have to end with Jesus standing exactly there, as the narration just stops?

By innocently jumping from one gospel to another, I’ve been messing up the flow of thought of at least one of them. What I ought to do is be more careful about how I embellish the biblical accounts of things. I need to attend much more closely to what the Spirit is saying in the words of each biblical book.

I think of this as learning to trust the words and thought-patterns of scripture. I want to swim with the current that is flowing through Scripture, not across it. If I can stay consistent with Matthew’s way of thinking and talking, I can be in a position to pick up all kinds of momentum and nuance from what the Holy Spirit has planned and put in place in that book. If I jump from one frame of reference to another, my arguments may only be as good as I can make them with my own clever connection-making. But if I’ve got the current of Matthew behind me, I may say something that can hit an audience with a power greater than my own words or insights.

Of course by comparing the two gospels, we are able to say that, historically speaking, Jesus must have said these words and then later ascended. That’s how the end of Matthew and the end of Luke can be harmonized. That must be how it actually happened in history. But by presenting it that way, I am opting out of the stories told by both Matthew and Luke, and am preferring a historical reconstruction of my own making. Even though it’s a pretty good reconstruction, it’s not divinely inspired. So it could be faulty, and it will certainly be weak in comparison to God’s word.

Thinking about Thinking about Rap — Unexpected Thoughts over Thanksgiving

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

Over the past few days the evangelical community has been talking about the kinds of things you would expect — the meaning of Thanksgiving, the turn to the Christmas season, the fact that some stores were opening on Thanksgiving Day and the various issues of the season. And then came rap. Out of the blue, when least expected, the topic changed to rap and the Gospel. Over the last few days a great deal has been written and said, sparked by a panel discussion at an evangelical conference in which rap music was dismissed as unworthy of evangelicals and of the Gospel.

I recognize the arguments made by the panelists. I am tempted to make them myself. In fact, I have made them myself … in my head. I know the arguments well. Form matters when it comes to music, and the form of music is not incidental to the meaning communicated. The biblical vision of music grows out of the union of the good, the beautiful, and the true in the very being of God. That union of the transcendentals means that Christians should seek only those musical expressions that best combine the good, the beautiful, and the true.

In other words, Johann Sebastian Bach. In my view, Bach got it just about right, even almost perfect. His music is an exhilaration of proportion and purpose in which form and message are precisely, intentionally, even magnificently combined. Bach is never far from me, especially when I am working and particularly when I am writing. I should acknowledge Bach in my books. Karl Barth listened to Mozart, and I love Mozart’s music (at least, most of it). But Mozart is a genius in a way that Bach was not, and genius can easily get in the way of musical art. Add to this the fact that Mozart’s worldview was seriously flawed. That explains why his magnificent but unfinished Requiem Mass in D Minor is so moving, but so unsatisfying. Beethoven’s pantheism and Enlightenment sensibilities do not ruin his music, but they do make his incredible music rather inaccessible for Christian worship.

Bach, on the other hand, is perfect. It is also important to know that Bach was a servant of the Lutheran Reformation. In his brilliant new book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, conductor John Eliot Gardiner affirms that Bach saw himself extending the musical theology of Martin Luther, with the glory of God as his supreme purpose and the task of music “to give expression and added eloquence to the biblical text.” So we should just end the development of church music and Christian musical artistry with Bach.

But there is a problem with this proposal. Bach was writing music that was understandable to the culture of his day, and not just to the elites. As a matter of fact, many among the elites did not like his music, accusing Bach of using crude structures, lowly themes, and of borrowing from unworthy musical sources. And then there is the issue of his pounding music as found in his famous organ works. Those pedal sequences in his toccatas are jarring to the senses and physical in reception and impression. Hardly appropriate for use in church and the service of the Gospel.

And the people who would argue now about the unworthiness of rap music often think of Bach as the quintessential Christian musician. As I said already, I have made many of the same arguments myself. In my head. Thankfully not in public. Am I holding back?

No, I allow myself those arguments in my head when I want to absolutize my preferences and satisfy myself in the righteousness and superiority of my own musical taste and theology. The problem for me is that my theology of music will not allow me to stay self-satisfied on the matter, and by God’s grace I have not made arguments out loud that would violate that theology.

Rap music is not my music. I do not come from a culture in which rap music is the medium of communication and I do not have the ear for it that I have for other forms of music. But I do admire its virtuosity and the hold that is has on so many, for whom it is a first and dominant musical language. I want that language taken for the cause of the Gospel and I pray to see a generation of young Gospel-driven rappers take dominion of that music for the glory of God. I see that happening now, and I rejoice in it. I want to see them grow even more in influence, reaching people I cannot reach with music that will reach millions who desperately need the Gospel. The same way that folks who first heard Bach desperately needed to hear the Gospel.

The good, the beautiful, and the true are to be combined to the greatest extent possible in every Christian endeavor, rap included. I have no idea how to evaluate any given rap musical expression, but rappers know. I do know how to evaluate the words, and when the words are saturated with the Gospel and biblical truth that is a wonderful thing. Our rapping Gospel friends will encourage one another to the greatest artistic expression. I want to encourage them in the Gospel. Let Bach’s maxim drive them all — to make (their) music the “handmaid of theology.”

Bach’s English Suite No. 3 in G Minor is playing as I write this. It makes me happy to hear it. But knowing that the Gospel is being taken to the ears and hearts of new generation by a cadre of gifted young Gospel rappers makes me far happier.

Casinos, Pot and the Quest For Consistency

By Ross Douthat
The New York Times, The Opinion Pages

My Sunday column on “pot and jackpots” — that is, the march toward marijuana legalization and the spread of casino gambling — tried to widen the usual culture-war frame to encompass not just bedroom-and-altar hot buttons, but the way the broader logic of “consenting adults” is working itself out in other areas of American life. One point I didn’t get to, though, is the extent to which both of these issues, pot and gambling, illustrate what one might call the rationalizing impulse in modern American politics, which seeks perfect fairness and consistency at the expense of compromises rooted in the accidents of history, and which makes it hard for conservatives to defend older, inherently-arbitrary arrangements even when they make practical sense.

Consider casinos, for instance. Was there any deep principle behind the old, pre-1990s dispensation, in which New Jersey and Nevada essentially served as the country’s designated outlets for the deep-seated urge to risk your money at lousy odds while a sleepless waitress refills your drinks? If such a principle existed, it wasn’t exactly obvious, and had I grown up in the general vicinity of Atlantic City or Reno I probably would have resented the set of accidents that turned my native city into the place where everybody else came to party, act out, occasionally ruin their own lives or their families, and despoil a community where they didn’t have to live. If casino gambling is socially destructive enough to be basically illegal in 48 states, I might would have thought, then why not in all 50? Or alternatively, if it’s okay for Nevadans to build gambling palaces, then why shouldn’t it be okay for Minnesotans or Vermonters or Oklahomans as well? If there’s a right to gamble, why shouldn’t it apply everywhere — and if casinos come with social costs, why not do the fair thing and spread those costs around?

So too, in a slightly different way, with the longstanding prohibition on marijuana. As advocates for legalizing pot have long protested, there’s no obviously compelling reason besides the quirks of history and culture that clearly justifies making alcohol a normal part of respectable socializing, while consigning weed to the extralegal fringe. If I prefer a toke to a drink, why should the law draw some spurious, culturally contingent distinction that makes my preference criminal, and consigns dealers to prison while bartenders walk free? If we restrict substances that can damage their users, why not do the fair thing and make the restrictions uniform?

The answer is … well, the answer in both cases is essentially contingent, historicist, tradition-minded. We have these inherited limits — geographic, legal — on certain vices, certain self-destructive activities. They are inherently arbitrary, yes — but they also may do useful work regulating how easily and casually and frequently people indulge in those vices, and they may strike a balance between puritanism and permissiveness that’s socially useful even if isn’t perfectly consistent or obviously fair. Whereas making consistency our north star requires either accepting an unsustainable level of repression (adding a reboot of Prohibition to the War on Drugs, say, or telling Americans that Vegas is closed and they have to fly to the Caribbean for those kind of thrills) or a damaging level of permissiveness … with the latter, quite possibly, being what we’re headed for today.

We’re headed there because these kind of tradition-based arguments don’t satisfy the modern mind, but also because in a society that doesn’t put much stock in arguments from tradition it’s hard to go just part of the way on a given social question and then stop. With casino gambling, for instance, I don’t think the “Indian tribe carveout” that brought casinos to a lot of states in the Clinton era was necessarily a good idea, but I could imagine someone arguing that it offered a better balance between restriction and release than the Atlantic City/Vegas model. But whether it was better or not, it was seemingly foredoomed to be temporary: Once the old taboos were broken and the process got started, there was no obvious stopping place, no obvious reason why states that had already conceded on the principle of welcoming casinos wouldn’t want to claim a large piece of the action for themselves. And that’s how we’ve ended up, not with the modest expansion of casino gambling that the reservation model seemed to promise, but with a race to the bottom by income-hungry states.

With marijuana, as I said in the column, I’m a lot more sympathetic to the steps toward decriminalization that have been taken to date, because I think the strict-prohibition model has been a pretty clear policy failure, with too many attendant injustices, in a way that the “only in Vegas” model of casino policy was not. But I also worry that we’re basically in the “only on Indian reservations” stage of the progression with pot, and that in a generation or so we’ll have passed from the plausible way station of decriminalization to the logical endpoint of full commercial legalization, because nobody will be able to adequately explain in principle why using a drug should be legal but turning a profit off it (with the attendant bounty of tax dollars for the state) should not. If I were confident that this process would be managed by, say, a wise policy mind like Mark Kleiman, who favors allowing small-scale production and distribution while maintaining a ban on commercial production, I would feel better about where we’re headed. But the Kleiman stopping point, however practically desirable, has some of the same arbitrariness problems as the old regime, and the logic of full legalization just seems like it may prove too powerful for a permissively-inclined, fairness-oriented, consistency-seeking society to resist.

Pot and Jackpots

By Ross Douthat
The New York Times

BASED on what stirs passions and wins headlines, it would be easy to imagine that the only cultural debates that matter in America are the ones that have to do with sex. 

There are good reasons for our intimate obsession: Desire is intertwined with identity, sex conceives the human future, the family is the place where all our ladders start. But to understand America’s changing cultural landscape, sometimes a wider lens is useful — because the same trends that have altered the way we think about sex and reproduction have wider repercussions as well. 

Consider two issues: casino gambling and marijuana. We’re used to the idea that attitudes on a controversy like gay marriage have changed with unprecedented speed. But both casinos and pot have gone mainstream over the last generation at a similarly remarkable pace. 

In 1990, casino gambling was still concentrated in Nevada and Atlantic City. Then came the rise of Indian-reservation gambling; then came casinos with no tribal fig leaf. Today 23 states have commercial casinos, and the old model of casino-going as a what-happens-in-Vegas excursion has given way to casino-going as routine entertainment. 

“In the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states,” a report from the Institute for American Values noted this year, “nearly every adult now lives within a short drive of a casino.” And after this Tuesday, that drive may get considerably shorter, because New York voters are expected to ratify a constitutional amendment allowing up to seven more casinos in the state. 

The marijuana revolution is arguably not so far advanced, since only two states, Washington and Colorado, are experimenting with outright legalization. But more such experiments are expected to follow soon, and medicinal marijuana is already available in 20 states. Meanwhile, public opinion on the issue has shifted about as fast as it has on gay marriage — from 32 percent support for legalization in 2002 to 58 percent in the latest Gallup poll. 

There are significant differences in the ways gambling and pot have won America. The spread of casinos has been more of a top-down phenomenon, driven by states seeking revenue and an industry that’s free with campaign contributions. The permissive turn on marijuana has been a more (if you will) grass-roots affair — driven by activists and artists, influenced by empathy for the terminally ill, and hastened by public exhaustion with the drug war. 

But both have been made possible by the same trend in American attitudes: the rise of a live-and-let-live social libertarianism, the weakening influence of both religious conservatism and liberal communitarianism, the growing suspicion of moralism in public policy. 

And both, in different ways, illustrate the potential problems facing a culture pervaded by what the late sociologist Robert Bellah called “expressive individualism” and allergic to any restrictions on what individuals choose to do. 

This is clearer in the case of casinos, whose consequences for the common good are straightforwardly disastrous. As the Institute for American Values report points out, the alliance of state governments and gambling interests is essentially exploitative, and the tax revenue casinos supply comes at the expense of long-term social welfare. Casinos tend to lower property values and weaken social capital in the places where they’re planted, they’re more likely to extract dollars from distressed communities than to spur economic development, and their presence is a disaster for the reckless and the addiction-prone. 

Pot is a more complicated issue, given its essential harmlessness for many users and the crying need to lock up fewer Americans for nonviolent offenses. But one can support decriminalizing marijuana possession, as many states have done, while still doubting the prudence of legalizing (and, of course, taxing) its open manufacture and sale. 

Whatever benefits legalization brings with it, it will almost certainly increase marijuana use, which has already risen sharply in the last decade. And as purely recreational as a joint may be for casual tokers, steady use isn’t always so harmless: it can limit educational attainment, and with it economic mobility, to an extent that mirrors the impact of growing up in a single-parent home. 

Perhaps these costs are just the price we pay for liberty, in the same way that certain social liberals and libertarians regard the costs of family breakdown as a price worth paying for emancipation from sexual repression. 

But liberals especially, given their anxieties about inequality, should be attuned to the way that some liberties can grease the skids for exploitation, with a revenue-hungry state partnering with the private sector to profiteer off human weakness. 

This is one reason previous societies made distinctions between liberty and license that we have become loath to draw — because what seems like a harmless pleasure to the comfortable can devastate the poor and weak. 

Or else, with pot and slots no less than bread and circuses, it can simply distract their minds, dull their senses and make them easier to rule.