2007 November archive at Zeal For Truth

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Archive for November, 2007

For Christians Only: An Alternative to Traditional Health Insurance

Published by Thainamu November 30, 2007 in General. 10 Comments

If you have a job, thank the Lord. If you have a job that provides health insurance, thank the Lord twice. Not everyone is so fortunate. An estimated 45 million people in the United States are without health insurance of any kind, and many more are underinsured.

As an alternative to traditional health insurance, some otherwise uninsured Christians are turning to medical sharing societies. Such groups offer benefits similar to health insurance, but they rely on a type of voluntary giving to meet the medical needs of others in the group, along with an agreement to live according to healthy Biblical principles.

There are several different programs and, although each is structured somewhat differently, they are generally organized along similar lines. Some examples:

Picky, Picky
Not just anyone can join one of these plans, and that is part of what makes them cost effective. It is well-documented that a “Christian lifestyle” is a healthier lifestyle, so that means the medical bills will be fewer. Typically a member of one of these plans must agree to:

sign a statement of faith
agree to live by biblical principles
abstain from the use of tobacco and the illegal use of drugs
follow biblical teaching on the use of alcohol
attend church regularly

I belong to a large Christian organization which provided health coverage in a form similar to this for many years in a self-funded pool of funds to pay for the medical bills of our group. It was open only to members of the group and their minor children. Recently, they put that system aside and moved to a traditional health insurance, but one that specialized in overseas coverage.

More study would be required to know if medical sharing plans are adequate coverage for the price they cost, but I like the idea of paying some kind of smaller health insurance premium in exchange for a healthy lifestyle.

Capitalism and the Vanishing Grocery Store

Published by Kenneth Martens November 29, 2007 in Politics and Current Events. 17 Comments

An article in the Dallas Morning News (It shouldn’t take a road trip to shop) a few weeks ago caught my attention. Apparently, poor neighborhoods tend to have fewer grocery stores than expected.

It may not surprise you that grocers open few stores in low-income neighborhoods, but economic theory actually predicts the opposite.

Economic theory predicts that the typical low-income resident spends a lot less on luxuries like vacations, but not very much less on necessities like food. Everyone has to eat. And because there is no good substitute for food, low-income residents spend a higher fraction of their incomes on food than high-income residents do.

Economic theory suggests other reasons why grocery stores should thrive in low-income neighborhoods. Rents are lower, which means stores can save on costs by locating there, and there are few competitors nearby to steal away sales.

It seems that store owners are not behaving as economic theory would predict.

So Dr. Nathan Berg researched how companies decide to locate stores. You can read the full report here: Imitation in Location Choice (warning: previous link includes complicated math equations.) Berg goes into detail and works out the math, but the gist of it is this: there are two ways to decide where to locate a new store.

Perform expensive market research and calculate expected profits for each possible location, and pick the most profitable location.
See where other businesses are located, and open a store in the same neighborhood.

The second method is a lot cheaper, because you don’t have to pay for market research. You just assume that if a lot of other businesses are in the area, it’s probably a good location. The result is that businesses rarely locate in poor urban neighborhoods. There aren’t any businesses in those neighborhoods, so everybody avoids them because they assume it’s a bad location. When businesses buck the trend and move into these shunned neighborhoods, the results can be unexpeced profits.

Starbucks and Home Depot have earned profits far in excess of what their own demand forecast models predicted by investing in long overlooked, low-income neighborhoods previously regarded as unprofitable.

Potentially profitable neighborhoods being systematically ignored? What does it say about laissez faire capitalism when the market ignores potential profits? Clearly laissez faire capitalism does not result in a perfect marketplace. In the absence of perfect information, the market will never be perfectly efficient.

For example: if businessmen could always perfectly predict their profits, they would not pass up these opportunities. But in the absence of perfect information, businessmen must make decisions based on what they do know. Exhaustive market research is expensive. So decisions are made based on inexpensive heuristics–rules of thumb.

For example, according to one individual involved in location decisions for the German discount supermarket chain Lidl, its location decisions follow a simple rule of thumb: build a store wherever Aldi, Lidls primary competitor, has a location (Scheibene, 2007, personal communication).

So this raises the question: is laissez faire capitalism the best, most efficient way to run an economy? How long must poor urban neighborhoods go without easy access to grocery stores until the free market notices that poor people have to eat too?

I’m not arguing for a command economy. There doesn’t need to be a central authority regulating the location of grocery stores. But maybe there is a place for local governments, at the city and county level, to get involved in attracting grocery stores to poor urban neighborhoods. Keep in mind, this is not charity: these stores will be profitable and will not need to be subsidized. All the local governments need to do is provide the market research–and the success stories from business that have already made the plunge–about the profitability of these long-ignored neighborhoods.

From Vietnam to Iraq: Learning from Our Mistakes

Published by Colin November 28, 2007 in Essays, Politics and Current Events. 65 Comments

In the fall of 2004, as I was getting closer to finishing my undergraduate education, I began to breathe easier knowing that I’d soon be leaving the constant barrage of “left-wing propaganda” at the University of Oregon. Like many current college-aged conservatives - I was holding on for dear life to the mainline conservative mantras in the hope that I would pull through my college experience without succumbing to the mind-washing ideologies surrounding me.

No conservative agenda was more attacked than the War in Iraq, and naturally, I defended that war all the more fiercely. But that began to change when I took a seemingly unrelated class on the history of Vietnam. Reading former Communist Minister of Justice Truong Nhu Tang’s book A Vietcong Memoir allowed me to look at a conflict similar to Iraq without being concerned about the current political debate.

An Overview of Ideology in Vietnam
For Americans on the outside looking in, the politics around the Vietnam War were commonly drawn up in the oversimplistic terms of American might versus the global Communist revolution. Yet for those within South Vietnam’s nationalist struggle for independence, like Truong, the War and the time period surrounding it meant something completely different. Starting from his first encounter with Ho Chi Minh until his eventual exile a few years after the War, Truong and many like him in the various organizations he helped pioneer and participate in, saw independence as the ends of a struggle that employed various means.

He did not want to see Vietnam be the subject of a colonial power (such as France), occupying country (such as the United states) or global ideology (such as Communism). Truong was above all, a nationalist who wanted to see an end to foreign occupation, influence and manipulation in the South as well as a strong, liberal, free and democratic government structure to eventually be unified with the North through peaceful means.

How Violence Becomes the Answer
Why was an otherwise peaceful, democratically-minded individual like Truong drawn to ally himself with such radical and violent communist groups? After all, Truong was not a communist, nor was he sympathetic with their ideology, methods or goals - however, he hated seeing his country occupied. He wanted to be free - left alone by the powers of the world so that he, and his countrymen, could make for themselves a society that reflected their values and culture.

But the US, the latest in a line of occupying powers, was not leaving anytime soon. Moreover, they subverted these noble ideals as illegitimate regime after regime was set up by US agencies. For people like Truong, it was clear that the US was not going to be bargained with and that war was the only alternative left open to them in order to secure freedom. The communists were the most prepared for war and they had plenty of funding from China to make things painful for the US in the South.

The Iraq Parallels
In a war against occupiers, people who would otherwise be enemies (communists and nationalists in this case) are drawn into tight alliances. In many ways, we are seeing the same thing in Iraq - there is strong support for democracy oriented movements in the middle-east. Iraq was burgeoning with such a movement before the US-led invasion, hence the easy sell to the public by US officials. Vice President Dick Cheney, for example:

I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals, people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who’s a professor at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he’s written great books about the subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.

But liberation soon turned into another long occupation in their land and those who originally welcomed us are ready for us to go and let them pick up the mess. But we aren’t leaving, and our leaders and future leaders are pledging years of occupation. Naturally, at some point, after seeing his family and friends traumatized by the violence surrounding him, the typical peace-minded Iraqi is going to give up on waiting and instead join with terrorists and insurgents. Though he is probably a moderate Muslim and hates the terrorists, he hates the US (and the occupation it represents) more and would rather ally with radical terrorists and try to do something about it than sit back as his life is destroyed as collateral.

In fact, we should consider that imitation is the best form of flattery. Many of the insurgents, rather than hating US ideals, are demonstrating the universality of freedom and liberty. They love those ideals which founded the US - and they are fighting an occupying power just as our founders did some two centuries ago.

Consider the state motto of New Hampshire, “live free or die” - it is a noble phrase, and yet in many ways, it is the rally cry of those moderate Iraqis who have joined with their enemies (and ours) to fight the US.

Choices And Significance

Published by Bryan November 27, 2007 in General and Philosophy. 4 Comments

Tomorrow I have to hand in a short 1500 word paper on Charles Taylor’s work Malaise of Modernity. The book is actually a transcript of Taylor’s Massey Lecture which for those non-Canadians is pretty much the premier lecture to be given in Canada. It’s therefore an easy work to read, but one that is surprisingly difficult when you try to look at it in detail. I won’t use this space to go into a detailed look at what Taylor is saying in this lecture, I just did that in a paper, but I do want to look briefly at one argument he makes regarding choice and significance.

In the chapter titled Inescapable Horizons he says the following:

But in some forms this discourse slides toward an affirmation of choice itself. All options are equally worthy, because they are freely chosen, and it is choice that confers worth. The subjectivist principle underlying soft relativism is at work here. But this implicitly denies the existence of a pre-existing horizon of significance, whereby some things are worthwhile and others less so, and still others not at all, quite anterior to choice. But then the choice of sexual orientation loses any special significance. It is on a level with any other preferences, like that for taller or shorter sexual partners, or blonds or brunettes. No one would dream of making discriminating judgments about these preferences, but that’s because they are all without importance. They really do just depend on how you feel. Once sexual orientation comes to be assimilated to these, which is what happens when one makes choice the crucial justifying reason, the original goal, which was to assert the equal value of this orientation is subtly frustrated. Difference so asserted becomes insignificant…

I find the argument in this section fascinating. Now Taylor chose here to use homosexuality as his example, but you could substitute any ongoing argument where one side holds up choice as their justification (think abortion). If Taylor’s argument is right here, then choice cannot be used as a justification because it has no significance. Lets work briefly through what his argument is.

Those who believe in subjectivism will argue to Taylor that homosexuality (to continue to use Taylor’s example) is simply a choice of sexual orientation (this is NOT the argument that all homosexuals use, I think abortion would be a better example since many if not most homosexuals do not see it as a choice but we’ll follow Taylor here). One may choose to be straight, or choose to be gay. But if it is only a choice, asks Taylor, why is it significant?

There is nothing special about a choice, we make them all day long without a second thought as to their significance. Unless one simply wants their sexual orientation determined by a cost benefit analysis, or how you feel at the moment, there has to be something more then pure choice that matters in some decisions. There must be a significance attached to the decision. For Taylor (although in the above quote he doesn’t get into it) that significance has to be morality.

Arguments regarding homosexuality and abortion must be moral arguments, not simply arguments abut the right to choose. If those who support these actions simply argue them based on their right to choose them they have already lost the debate because it’s lost all significance. If it’s just a choice and has no significance, then it shouldn’t matter if one chooses not to.

However, do they talk as if it’s only a choice? Do you ever hear someone say: I choose to sleep in 5 minutes today, then I choose to have toast for breakfast, then I chose to have an abortion, before choosing to watch some TV before dinner. It’s crazy to think about someone talking that way (although I assume there are some that do).

The debates on homosexuality and abortion have to be moral debates because they are areas where both sides (whether they admit it or not is another question) put significance on it. Both sides know it’s more then about a choice, there is more at stake here and thats why there is argument. If a choice in these matters is at all worth making, it must be more then simply a choice, something must be at stake.

A little further on Taylor summarizes this when he says:

Which issues are significant, I do not determine. If I did, no issue would be significant. But then the very ideal of self-choosing as a moral ideal would be impossible.

Book Review: Decision Making & the Will of God - Part 3

Published by Jasen Tracy November 26, 2007 in Religion, Book Reviews and Christian Books. 8 Comments

It might seem strange for the authors to spend the first third of the book without telling you what they actually do believe. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the first part and found it to be insightful.Once the authors get around to spelling out their views, they do so in a hurry. Their view is neatly summarized in the first two pages of the section, and then several chapters of elaborations follow.

Summary of the Wisdom View
Since this is the very center of the book, I think I’ll let the authors speak for themselves and offer a somewhat lengthy quote:

1. In those areas specifically addressed by the Bible, the revealed commands of God (His moral will) are to be obeyed.

2. In those areas where the Bible gives no command or principle (nonmoral decisions), the believer is free and responsible to choose his own course of action. Any decision made within the moral will of God is acceptable to God.

3. In nonmoral decisions, the objective of the Christian is to make wise decisions on the basis of spiritual expediency.

4. In all decisions, the believer should humbly submit, in advance, to the outworking of God’s sovereign will as it touches each decision.

God’s Moral Will
Since the authors believe that there isn’t an individual will of God as expressed in the traditional view, a major part of their focus is on God’s moral will. God’s moral will is the ethical structure upon which we are to base our lives.

God’s moral will is an expression of his character. We are to be holy because He is holy. It does not merely address our actions, but every aspect of our lives, the why and the how as well as the what. Basing on 2 Timothy 3:16-17 the book makes the case that God’s moral will is fully revealed in the Bible, because it is “adequate to equip believers for every good work.”

Choice
The authors make the point that in most things, that is, in nonmoral decisions, people are free to make their own choice. They go through numerous scriptural passages, in both the Old and New Testaments, demonstrating that in matters not specifically addressed by God (through scripture, the prophets, etc.) people had freedom of choice. An example:

1st Corinthians 10:27 - “If one of the unbelievers invites you and you want to go, eat anything that is set before you without asking questions for conscience’ sake.”

The believer is free to accept or decline the invitation. The book notes that Paul did not write something like, “Determine if it’s God’s will for you to go.”

The Basis for Making Decisions
After having made a solid case that in nonmoral decisions believers are free to choose, it obviously becomes important to see what we should base our decisions on, and it is to this that the authors turn their attention to next. A study of several passages is made to this end. Outside of supernatural revelation, the apostles do not claim to make decisions because they had a feeling that it was the will of God. Instead they use phrases like, “we thought it best” “I thought it necessary” and “if it is fitting.”

But why did they make one decision and not another? The authors state that they based their decision on “spiritual expediency.” Spiritual expediency means what works best to accomplish God’s moral will. To make these decisions we are to employ the use of wisdom (Eph 5:15-16 and Col 4:5). I presume this is why the authors refer to their position as the “wisdom view.”

To acquire wisdom, we need to have the right attitude and make use of the right approach. We must realize that the ultimate source of all wisdom is God. Scripture mentions that God gives wisdom to those whose attitude is characterized by the following: reverence, humility, teachableness, diligence, uprightness, and faith.

The approach to finding wisdom begins by asking God for it (Col 1:9-10). We should then: seek for wisdom in scripture (Psalms 119), conduct research (Luke 14:28-32), consult wise counselors (Proverbs 11:14), both to see if know of any scriptures that address the situation in question and if their experience has taught them something in that regard, and look at nature (Proverbs 6:6-11).

God’s Sovereign Will
The book then proceeds with two chapters on God’s sovereign will. The authors express God’s sovereign will in a very fatalistic way. A quote from the book will illustrate this:

Would you like to know His sovereign plan for the past? … If something happened it was part of the plan.

How this strong view of God’s sovereignty reconciles with the previous statements that seemingly deny God has a “detailed life-plan uniquely designed for each person,” has been a much pondered question in reviews of the book. I think the authors’ view is that you can’t know God’s plan for you ahead of time (except in the moral will sense), but you can see in hindsight what it is (because it happened). Thus, a major concern of the Traditional view, that one might miss God’s perfect will for themselves, is not something that is possible. This is a point where I think the book could have used more clarity, as the authors themselves do not resolve this difficulty.

The authors make a pretty good argument for their view of God’s sovereignty, but suffice it to say, I am not (cannot be, if you prefer) a fatalist. I still found the book quite valuable even if I disagree with this part.

Next week: Application

Weekly Links - November 19-23

Published by Jasen Tracy November 24, 2007 in Current Events. 3 Comments

Editor’s note: In an effort to provide additional information over the weekend, we have decided to sum up some of the goings-on throughout each week. These are the stories that caught our attention over the past week:

Mike Huckabee’s ad goes for humor - with Chuck Norris. (Video)

Researchers in Wisconsin and Japan have turned ordinary human skin cells into what are effectively embryonic stem cells.” (From Political Animal)

The US Supreme Court will hear a gun control case. It is the first 2nd Amendment case before the Supreme Court since 1939.

Housing prices continue to fall like rocks. Speculation is being blamed, however bubbles happen for all kinds of reasons.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. writes about recently disclosed information concerning foreign fighters in Iraq, and the fact that the insurgency is overwhelming Iraqi and Sunni.

Christianity Today has an interesting article about Christianity in Africa.

Nietzsche’s Duplicities

Published by cchrisr November 23, 2007 in Philosophy. 1 Comment

Note: While this may be rather long reading, it servers two purposes: to introduce a particular reading of Nietzsche and to give some background study on Deleuze who is the next subject of my “Faith Problems” series. One cannot read Deleuze without knowing Nietzsche.

How does one read Nietzsche? Is there a way to remain faithful to Nietzsche’s thought? In what ways is one a “Nietzschean”? Reading Nietzsche requires seeing a philosophy of contradictions, duplicities, and inconsistencies.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche depicts noon as the time “when man stands in the middle of his way between beast and overman.”¹ Noon is the period of transition between many things; one is neither one or the other but a multiplicity. This idea of the “Great Noon” runs throughout Nietzsche’s writings and presents a lens through which Nietzsche can be understood. Throughout his writings, Nietzsche presents a multiplicity of singularity where a person is never exactly one thing but always in the state of becoming. This lens should not be seen as a looking-glass to understand Nietzsche completely; Nietzsche’s philosophy has made it impossible to view from some kind of “objective” point of view.

Just as Nietzsche’s genealogies trace the presuppositions of a concept, we can also trace the presuppositions of his writings and philosophy; and sometimes these are contradictory. One cannot read his critique of truth without also seeing his defense of truth; it is not “Dionysius versus the Crucified” as a battle of two different things but rather a struggle of two extremes of the same thing within a person. This is how he paints his concept of the overman—Dionysiusand the Crucified.

Critiquing Truth
One focus of Nietzsche’s thought is that of truthfulness. It is sometimes deeply buried within Nietzsche’s works and often missed on casual readings. Yet he begins the preface to Beyond Good and Evil with the question “Supposing truth is a woman—what then?”² He also hints at his take on her: “What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to be won”³–truth is to be pursued, but it is a difficult task. This is because truth is a multiplicity—between two extremes of the same concept.

Nietzsche consistently affirms truth and knowledge. He thinks that he has found a radically new view of truth: “Perhaps nobody yet has been truthful enough about what ‘truthfulness is.’”⁴ So, what has he found that no other philosopher has found before? One extreme of truth that he sees is the idea of a transcendent, objective, universal truth—the “truth” of science. All philosophers have treated their discoveries as this great “truth”: “They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic.”⁵ For Nietzsche, it is clear that none have truly plumbed the depths of knowledge and found any kind of truth fit to be called transcendent. These philosophers have instead “[stood] truth on her head and [denied] perspective, the basic condition of all life.”⁶ Ironically, however, Nietzsche claims his own critique of this inversion to be “objective”!⁷ This is because of the opposite extreme, perspectivism: “Supposing that this also is only interpretation—and you will be eager enough to make this objection—well, so much the better.”⁸ This is an instantiation of truth as an individual’s truthfulness, which Nietzsche ultimately affirms as the highest virtue.⁹

This analysis of truth now exposes “everything that has hitherto been called ‘truth’…as the most harmful, insidious, and subterranean form of lie.”¹⁰ Here, Nietzsche begins to unearth the myth—the stories—behind all things held as “true.” Truth cannot be anything objective because that concept involves a contradictio in adjecto—these “immediate certainties” are subject to an unquestioned I that performs the thinking. Nietzsche’s response to such a thought is “it is improbable that you are not mistaken; but why insist on the truth?”¹¹ All truth is in reality an interpretation of truth, which Nietzsche implies in his fragment “On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense”:

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.¹²

We can see here Nietzsche’s one extreme of perspectivism in its full splendor. As metaphor, truth is unable to be transcendent because it is bound by human language and experience.

Affirming Reality
The birth of the overman is intrinsically tied to the death of God. The duplicity of life and death is, for Nietzsche, tied together at their roots. The first time Nietzsche writes about the death of God, the news is delivered by a madman to the marketplace; yet the more shocking part is that God was murdered by men.¹³ Ironically, however, the madman never answers his questions as to how or why men killed God. The answers to these questions are the ugly truths which only truthful men can bring.

The death of God is something that must be overcome not synthesized into a Hegelian dialectic. It is not a singular point of objective, transcendent truth; it is a multiplicity. God dies many kinds of deaths, as is fitting for all gods.¹⁴ First and foremost, “God died of his pity for man.”¹⁵ Later in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra expands upon this while talking to the retired pope: pity strangled God because God could not bear the sight of man hanging on the cross.¹⁶ This may answer how God has died, but it does not yet face the ugly truth of why God has died. For this, Nietzsche turns to morality: “I have already in the fourth act killed all the Gods—for the sake of morality!”¹⁷

It is not enough to see the death of God as an act against Christianity for it must also be seen as the capstone in the revaluation of all values. The death of God is so the overman can live; it is the symbol of truthfulness, of morality, and of redemption. Nietzsche’s revaluation of values is a new creation that stands in contrast to the old values: “We free spirits are nothing less than a ‘revaluation of all values,’ an incarnate declaration of war and triumph over all the ancient conceptions of ‘true’ and ‘untrue.’”¹⁸

Nietzsche’s new values are found in what he calls the Dionysian, the artistic and anti-Christian manner of valuing life.¹⁹ It is in Greek tragedy that Nietzsche finds the supreme affirmation and valuation of life which has been perverted and inverted in Socratic and Christian thought. Within tragedy, Nietzsche sees the duplicity of the Apollonian and Dionysian forms of art. Here, the truth of reality is portrayed as “the Dionysian chorus which ever anew discharges itself in an Apollonian world of images.”²⁰ Greek tragedy transforms the man into a satyr and is able to experience the wisdom of nature.²¹ Nietzsche’s new values are in reality the oldest values of the earth.

It is Nietzsche who, by perceiving the truth with all of its beauty and ugliness, rediscovers this and fights to bring truth back into philosophy and morality. Where is it that Nietzsche finds this lost truth? Within himself: “Revaluation of all values: that is my formula for an act of supreme self-examination on the part of humanity, become flesh and genius in me.”²²

Duplicity of Singularity
Through his self-examination, Nietzsche finds not a being or any agent of action but a flux of becoming. It is not a self that is unified through time—a transcendent self—but a self that is always between multiplicities. He sees himself in multiple ways as different selves that are the same: “I am a Doppelgänger, I have a ’second’ face in addition to the first. And perhaps also a third.”²³ This is the multiplicity of becoming that any conception of “being” in the former sense loses meaning because “whatever has being does not become; whatever becomes does not have being.”²⁴ Nietzsche is the first philosopher to fully reject the task of ontology and transvalue all ontological philosophy into the philosophy of becoming and multiplicity.

By now, the answer should be obvious as to how one should read Nietzsche. His writings are full of multiplicities and contradictions. He cannot be read as a coherent singularity that revolves around one focus; it is always many, five or six, three or two, but never one. In between these points, however, Nietzsche’s sense becomes apparent and felt. Nietzsche’s contradictions form the basis of his thought; they cannot be explained away in the service of a systematic Nietzschean thought. His immorality is a method of returning to morality. His affirmations are negations and his negations are affirmations. Nietzsche’s singularity is in his duplicity.

Nietzsche is not to be followed at all: “I want no ‘believers’; I think I am too malicious to believe in myself; I never speak to masses.— I have a terrible fear that one day I will be pronounced holy: you will guess why I publish this book before; it shall prevent people from doing mischief with me.”²⁵ To truly follow Nietzsche means that one must reject him and lose him.²⁶ Only then can one affirm his philosophy. To accept Nietzsche without rejecting him, without overcoming him, is to misread Nietzsche.

—-

1F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (TSZ) I, “On the Gift-Giving Virtue,” 3 in W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche.
2F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (BGE), Preface in W. Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche.
3BGE Preface.
4BGE 177.
5BGE 5.
6BGE Preface.
7F. Nietzsche, The Antichrist (AC), 20 in W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche.
8BGE 22.
9F. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (EH), “Why I Am a Destiny,” 3 in in W. Kaufmann, Basic Writings of Nietzsche.
10EH, “Why I am a Destiny,” 8.
11BGE 16.
12F. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in an Extramoral Sense” (TL) in W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche.
13F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science (GS), 125.
14TSZ IV “Retired.”
15TSZ II “On the Pitying.”
16TSZ IV “Retired.”
17GS 153.
18AC 13.
19F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (BT), Attempt at Self-Criticism (ASC) 5.
20BT 8.
21BT 9.
22EH, “Why I am a Destiny,” 1.
23EH “Why I am so Wise,” 3.
24TI “’Reason’ in Philosophy,” 1.
25EH, “Why I am a Destiny,” 1.
26TSZ I “On the Gift-Giving Virtue,” 3.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

Published by Thainamu November 22, 2007 in General. 0 Comments

You probably aren’t reading this on the day intended. Instead, you’re probably stuck in the airport on your way to Grandma’s house, stuffing yourself with stuffing, or watching the Cowboys. Your diet has been set aside for the day, and probably you’re with relatives you don’t see too often. I hope you are indeed thankful for whatever situation you find yourself in today.

Thanksgiving is a national, secular holiday in the US, but it started out for religious reasons. The early English settlers counted their blessings, such as they were, during a time of corporate thanksgiving to God. First, in 1619 at Berkeley Plantation

“Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty god.”

and again in 1621, the more famous story of the Pilgrims.

It wouldn’t do to thank God as a corporate nation any more, but we still can do so as individuals, churches and other groups of Christians. We do have lots to be thankful for in the broad sense—our physical surroundings aren’t all that bad. Even the poorest among us is quite physically comfortable and has quite a bit of stuff.

Scripture says a lot about being thankful, and gives many examples of prayers of thanksgiving. A few examples:

There are any commands to give thanks to God in song.
We are to give thanks because it is God’s will to do so.
Jesus gave thanks before eating.
Words of thanks are better than obscenities or foolish talk.

For a believer, giving thanks isn’t just a nice, polite thing to do. Rather, it is an act of obedience which serves to rightly align us with God and fellow man—in other words, it puts us in our place. When we give thanks we acknowledge our indebtedness to someone, admitting we are in a dependent relationship. Thankfulness to God and to others puts a damper on our ever-virulent pride.

Psalm 100

1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.

3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Giuliani is from Mars, Robertson is from Venus

Published by Ornot the Majestic November 21, 2007 in General, Religion, Politics and Current Events. 21 Comments

Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison. Turner and Hooch. Mutt and Jeff. America sure loves the odd couple - it’s obvious. No further proof was needed that opposites indeed attract than when on Nov. 7th, amongst a storm of celebrity presidential endorsements (most non-plussed nor surprising), Pat Robertson announced his support for “America’s Mayor”, Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today…

If the thrice-divorced, pro-abortion and pro-gay rights former mayor of New York being backed by the founder of the Christian Coalition of America is something you find a bit odd, well, you should….and not just from the narrow angle of Pat Robertson.

Considering Rudy Giuliani’s rather scathing remarks to Republican Congressman Ron Paul during the South Carolina Republican debate regarding the reasons for the 9/11 attack, five months later he accepts endorsement from a man suggested we invited the 9/11 attacks due to moral degradation (Pat Robertson Quotes).

We have permitted somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 million unborn babies to be slaughtered in our society. …..We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government. And, then we say ‘why does this happen?’ Well, why its happening is that God Almighty is lifting His protection from us.

Giuliani’s aide reported that the two have “shared goals” despite “minor differences”.

The overriding issue before the American people, is the defense of our population against the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists,” Robertson told the National Press Club audience. “Our world faces deadly peril…and we need a leader with a bold vision who is not afraid to tackle the challenges ahead.”Robertson said Giuliani is “a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans … It is my hope and prayer that he will lead the Republican Party to victory in November of 2008.”

“Minor Differences”? My experience with Christian “values voters” often placed abortion at the forefront of the important topics driving vote. Often, pulling hibernating voters from their four-year slumber to sluggishly waddle to the booths, without a hesitant dangling chad to be found in the crowd. But now abortion is a “minor difference”? This article sheds some light on this change:

Abortion is a low priority among Democratic-leaning voters (38 percent) and even Republican-leaning ones (43 percent). Voters overall rate the economy and the war in Iraq as leading issues.

Among Republican-leaning voters, the top issue important to their vote is terrorism with 77 percent marking it as very important. For Democratic voters, the leading issue is health care with 82 percent indicating so.

But wait…terrorism? But Mr. Robertson, I thought you agreed that such evils as pornography and abortion led to 9/11…I guess that core base has shifted. So have you. Irony? Considering the large backlash against John Kerry during the 2004 election over him being a “flip-flopper” and “waffling” on issues, I guess if you flip-flop in all the right directions, it’s not such a bad thing! Either that, or modern-Republicans have a short attention span.

Then again, maybe this is what Thomas Jefferson feared when he wrote this letter in 1802:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

As they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows. And compromises. Is this what was envisioned years ago? Perhaps the implications was to not only keep religion out of the state (for freedom of religion purporses), but to also keep the politics out of the church. For if once grievous abominations in the eyes of the moral majority can now become a minor difference, if those pushing for a return to a “Judeo-Christian baseline” will support the perceived “morality” more than the man, whom will the masses follow? Who has become their God now? Is it chasing after power? Is it honoring morality as equivalence to righteousness? Or has the self-proclaimed holy-water been muddied by the hands of agenda. For as power corrupts, are we so blind as to believe that the lust for such power is absent in the holy hands of the politically motivated Christian leader? For this nation, let’s hope history hasn’t been devoid of its lessons.

The Christian Dilemma of Paying Taxes vs. Endorsing Theft

Published by Colin November 20, 2007 in General. 16 Comments

I must be honest outright: were I not a Christian, I think I might consider not paying my taxes. I understand that this would be pretty anti-social and most definitely radical, but I have a moral opposition to endorsing theft. And taxation, no matter what kind of consequentialist justification it is wrapped up in, is theft.

But I am a Christian - one who believes that the Bible is divinely inspired and requires complete and consistent obedience. So when I come to this passage, I have to remember where my allegiance lies:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil… For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor (Romans 13:1-3, 6-7; NKJV).

The bible clearly tells me that I need to pay taxes. This is not because taxes are just or fair - the bible makes no such comment - but because I am to submit to authority. Taking this passage at its most basic meaning then, requires that Christians pay taxes because it is a demonstration of submitting to authority.

However, we all know the exception to this rule. What if authority asks us to start murdering people? Clearly, we have a dilemma between God’s authority (thou shalt not murder) and God’s “appointed” authority. In this situation, the ruling authorities have abandoned their qualifier for Christian submission; namely, “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.” Christians are not obligated to follow authority that promotes evil works.

But what about theft? If it is agreed that taxes, despite what they pay for or how they are spent, are theft in principle - a taxing authority is demanding, under threat of jail or fines, that the victim give them some of their property involuntarily - then isn’t this wrong also? “Thou shalt not steal” is right there with murder in the ten commandments.

It’s not so clear. Paul specifically mentions taxes as though they are “owed.” Paul seemed to think that there is inherent debt owed to society and that debt is payed via taxation. Is Paul making a philosophical statement here that can be ignored or explained away by other passages? I don’t know, but he has done this in other places (1 Corinthians 7:25, for example).

If Paul is not making a man-based philosophical statement, then I have a couple of possible explanations, all of which still do not completely satisfy me:

When rulers are enacting taxes for “good” then it is good to pay taxes
Taxes are only “due” to “continually” good authorities
Despite the “owed” language, Paul really means to voluntarily pay them
Paul believed in a rudimentary version of social contract theory

It’s a true moral dilemma - I don’t want to disobey the bible, but I also don’t want to be supporting theft. I have reached my own compromise of voluntarily paying taxes, but trying to use as little services as possible so as not to support the theft from others. I’m comfortable with this as a pragmatic short-term solution, but there needs to be clarity in principle on this issue. What is the moral solution where God is obeyed, the bible is followed and earthly authority is served?

Zeal For Truth