And the Psychosis Grows Deeper With Each Passing Day

Glenn Beck seems to be tottering on the edge of oblivion with this latest rant about the Middle East. It's truly hard to keep up with all of the "players" in his conspiratorial nightmare or wet dream. This may explain why he's now losing a third of his viewership from this time last year. And thankfully some conservatives are finally speaking out against his wild rantings. That's not to say they still don't have their own issues. They certainly do. But gladly bizarre conspiracy theories isn't one of them. Honestly, watching Glenn's latest full on vent has me wondering if he's one step away from a window ledge. I have enjoyed poking fun at his bizarreness but he really does seem to be on the edge of a total mental breakdown. What was fun to watch is becoming instead scary.

Teaching Kids About Science in Church

There's a good post today at the Internet Monk about how best to teach preteen kids in church about faith/science issues. Unfortunately (or maybe not!) the gentleman in question has only a half hour to introduce the subject to his class this coming week.

Here's the conundrum Ben is in:

Dear Chaplain Mike,

On Friday, I’ve got 30 minutes to talk to a group of 11-13 year-olds about ‘creation and evolution’.

They haven’t studied anything about either at school, and in the context of the church they go to, there isn’t a great deal of pressure for me to push things either way.

I’m a bit stumped about where to even start: creation/evolution, religion/science, Genesis/Gilgamesh?!

I may just be able to ask them questions and improvise from there, but I’d quite like a backup plan…

I’d be interested to know what advice Internet Monk readers might have.

Regards,
Ben S

Here's what I recommended in the thread below:

Ditto on what Paul says above. I would also use a simple illustration of how a word or a phrase can have different meanings depending the context within which it is used as a way of showing that some of the biblical terms in early Genesis don’t necessarily have to be seen as meaning “one” thing. Though this is short notice, I would highly recommend the book by Sigmund Brouwer called “Who Made the Moon?” It’s subtitled “A Father Explores How Faith and Science Agree” and it is fantastic for parents of younger and even preteen kids inquiring about faith/science issues. It’s also accurate without being overly technical, since it is meant to be accessible to both a non-scientist parent and the child.

Also a very important point when teaching and dialoguing with the kids. Listen to them! Respect their questions. And please don’t answer if you don’t know. They have a finely tuned BS detector that, I promise, will go off if you try to answer without knowing what you’re talking about. If they stump ya, admit it and tell them, if it’s at all possible, that you’ll look into their question more and get back to them on it. They’ll respect that honesty more than any false bravado. It might also be a good thing to point out a handful of devout Christians who have also been world renowned scientists, whether in biology, astronomy, chemistry, genetics, etc., so that they know that real people can and do live in both worlds without having to give up either. I pray it goes well for him!

What would you do in this situation? With such a short time to introduce something so big to a crowd as scary as 11-13 year olds who have no background about science, what would you want their "first impression" of science to be as it relates to the Christian faith? Again, check out the Internet Monk thread as more people respond. It should be fun and interesting.

The God of the Gaps is not God

I may like to shop at The Gap, but I sure don't want to worship a God of the Gaps. And this essay gives a helpful explanation why.

Something Inside My Head

I just found this amazing link at Mind Hacks about a song called Something Inside My Head and the lyrics are here.

What Parable, Myth, Fable, Best Describes Your Life?

Is it the parable of the Prodigal Son, the myth of Sisyphus, the Ugly Duckling? What story resonates as being close to your own story? What tale tells your tale?

All Things Bright and Beautiful...

Hehe. Couldn't resist.


Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

Do You Believe The Bible To Be 100% Factual/Truth?

I wrote this just a bit earlier in response to a friend's Facebook question:

Do You Believe The Bible To Be 100% Factual/Truth?

I used to be very strongly in the "inerrantist" camp regarding the absolute accuracy of scripture. That isn't to say I read the text in a wooden literalistic way. Even back then I understood that scripture was made up of many different genres of writing. In fact I even decided against going to a seminary several years ago because they didn't hold to inerrancy, and eventually came out to Gordon Conwell partly just for that reason, since they do officially hold to inerrancy. But ironically enough since I've been out here, I've moved steadily aways from the notion of inerrancy for several reasons.

First off, it's one of those doctrines that dies the death of a thousand qualifications. The reason there are so many qualifications is precisely because without them inerrancy would be obviously wrong.

And secondly, whenever there are textual variants among the manuscripts, which there are many, both OT and NT, it's argued that the doctrine of inerrancy is concerning the "autographs" and not any of the manuscripts we now have. But of course there are no autographs around to test this out by. It's therefore unfalsifiable.

And lastly, my interest in science and biology, cosmology, genetics, etc., has forced me to come to terms with trying to reconcile my faith with the modern scientific consensus concerning origins. Now I've never been a "young earth" type to begin with, and grew up on Carl Sagan's Cosmos, so I've never really struggled with accepting modern science. But for a long time I didn't really take the time to see how these two "books" (scripture and nature) of God's revelation related to each other.

So I don't think it's necessary to read scripture like it's a modern science textbook. That's a modernist and frankly fundamentalist way of looking at the text that does it a great injustice. Even within scripture we see different authors reinterpreting previously inspired texts in surprisingly "spiritual" and "metaphorical" ways. And in the early church some of the treatments were really out there at times, and it was considered OK because scripture was seen to be alive, fluid and flexible, precisely because is was "God-breathed."

Anyway thanks man for posting the question. It helps me to process my own thinking right now on where I'm at and where I'm "evolving" in my Christian understanding.

Being Human

Why do human beings so often see themselves as being radically separate from the rest of the "natural" world? I've seen this among both religious and secular people. Are the simple tools of primates or birds or raccoons or beavers less "natural" because they used natural materials for secondary goods? If all of that is still is considered "natural", why isn't all of human behavior likewise considered natural? What's at work here? I suspect this may have more to do with psychology than with theology or science.

Drowning Lake, Baptism, Death, Water

Scene 1: Drowning Lake
I almost drowned in this lake when I was around seven years old. It's just down the street from where I grew up on Staten Island and we always called it the Dismal Swamp, though in this picture it's quite pretty. A group of us were hanging out at the lake and I was standing on the outside of the railing alongside the road at the edge of the lake when I slipped on the rock I was standing on and went completely under the water. I didn't know how to swim (I still don't) and so I had to be pulled out of the water by someone else. I think it was one of my siblings, though I'm not sure. All I know is that it terrified me and left me phobic about water for many years after this traumatic event occurred.

My fear of water made taking baths a constant ordeal and I didn't take a shower till I was a teenager because having water even touch my face seized me with terror even years later. If my face went under water in any circumstance I was panic stricken. It took my cousin Betsy in North Carolina to finally get me to overcome my fear and step into a shower for the first time. I think the only reason she could get me to take such a drastic step (to me at least) was because I had a serious crush on her.

Scene 2: Baptism
When I was twenty one years old in the summer of 1986 I was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean at New Dorp Beach by a Messianic Rabbi/Pastor as jellyfish floated menacingly nearby. My heart was pounding, not only because of the spectacle of being publicly baptized in a rather crowded venue, but because being forcibly submerged under water three times in a row (Father,Son and Holy Spirit, remember?) scared me to death. It's a good thing I didn't know about the jelly fish floating nearby till only after the baptism or I never would have gone through with it. Even now I only half jokingly tell my baptism story as being nearly a baptism of fire if I'd been stung. But my fear of water was overcome by my sense of calling to be identified with Christ's death and resurrection, symbolized by baptism.

Scene 3: Death
It was July 27, 1998 and I had worked at Project Hospitality that day on nearly no sleep because I had spent the previous night till 5am with Gwenn who lived next door to me in our apartment building. We had talked, wept, held each other, and struggled through a long night of trying to figure out who she wanted to be. I had my own struggle of loving her more than anyone I had ever known, and yet knowing that she was involved with someone else. And yet we loved each other deeply in our own way. In some ways deeper than even her other relationships. We saw into each other's souls.

Well, when I came home from work I found police cars swarmed around our apartment building. As I walked around the side to walk up the three flights of stairs cops were along the whole way, each looking at me with eyes of suspicion. When I got to the top steps, halfway between my apartment and hers, with her door open and cops standing guard, I asked what was going on to no avail till Gwenn's father heard my voice and cried out that she's dead. She's dead. She had drowned in their back yard in-ground pool just a little bit earlier. Her mom had discovered her in the pool. Apparently she had taken her car to their house but had run out of gas on the way (her gas gauge was broken) so she had to walk about a mile to the house in high heat and high humidity. All while wearing her dancing outfit underneath her outer clothes because she was a dancer and had planned on going to dance class that day. When she got to the house, she couldn't get the front door lock to work. We know this because her key was still in the lock after she was found. She then went around back to get in through the back door, but that was locked as well. She must have sat at the edge of the pool to cool off. Apparently the coolness of the water combined with her exertion from the long walk and heat retaining outfit she was wearing was enough to cause her to faint. She fell into the water and drowned.

When I was driven to their house, she was still there. I collapsed once in the front driveway, but made it to the back and saw her lying, stiff, at the side of the pool, covered to protect her dignity. I staggered towards her lifeless body and knelt down beside her and touched her hair. She still had the most beautiful hair in the world. In the days that followed, hazy as they were, I sat Shiva with her family, attended the funeral, which was a traditional orthodox funeral. I was allowed to see her even though I'm a goy, because her family saw me as family. She had clay tablets on her eyes from Israel so that in the resurrection she'll see Israel first. I gave her my Star of David necklace that lies with her to this day because she held it that last night in her hands as I wore it and told me how much she liked it. I knew it had to be with her as a piece of me since when she died a part of me died too. And I wanted to be with her, even in burial.

These three scenes, all involving water, have deeply shaped me. To this day water exercises a primordial power over me. It both terrifies me and enchants me. In my darker moments of depression, when Darkness Itself stares me in the face, water beckons, both as friend and foe. Feared enemy and comforting friend. This September I wrote a poem where water played a vital if only a seemingly supporting role:

Dancing on the Cliff

When depression and addiction
do their deadly dance
the waves beckon below
as the melancholy music plays.

In each others grip
we dance and twirl and spin about
laughing and crying
ourselves to death.

The fog horn blows
and the train whistle sings
as the night descends
and the dance begins.

The wind blows in our hair
and sings a tune blue and true.
A lulling tune that grips us tight
and sees the pebbles fall below.

The ocean below roars
and sings its own song
low and deep forever
lapping at my heels.

And we dance and dance again
to a tune that plays every day.
I know the tune all too well
in its sultry slippery notes.

Cold soil against my feet
warm my soul and keep
me grounded knowing that
the Earth is my friend.

So we dance
and twirl about
in a moonlit sky
as waves and wind blow.

So we dance
and twirl about
in a moonlit sky
as waves and wind blow.

Pebbles and rocks
call out to each other
as our steps intermingle
with ocean spray.


So water still plays its part in my life, even today. It rises up and calls my name over and over again, beckoning me both to death and life. These liquid demons need to be redeemed by a drowning savior.

My Top 10 Blogs

Internet Monk
The Internet Monk is the brain child of the late Michael Spencer and has been consistently one of my favorite theological blogs out there. Since Michael's passing this past spring from cancer, several other folks have stepped in to carry on the mantle of navigating the Post-Evangelical Wilderness. So far they'r doing an excellent job.

Biologos
Biologos was founded by Dr. Francis Collins in 2007 in order to help Christians become more familiar with and therefore more comfortable with modern science, especially biological evolution. This has become my go to site for issues of faith and science.

Jesus Creed
Scot McKnight, the author of Jesus Creed, has become my favorite theologian. His blog deals primarily with theological issues, but he isn't afraid to address politics, war, science (frequently), movies, you name it. Always thought provoking.

Vinoth Ramachandra
Vinoth Ramachandra is the new kid on the block when it comes to blogging. But he has quickly distinguished himself by his trenchant critiques of imperialism, consumerism, materialism, and all from an evangelical Christian perspective. I suspect it's because he sees these issues from his perspective as a Sri Lankan who recognizes the idolatries of the left and right, the secular materialist and the violent fundamentalist. Well worth reading!

Little Green Footballs
Charles Johnson, the proprietor of Little Green Footballs, is a jazz musician, computer programmer, and all around news and politics junkie (just like me, minus the jazz and computer parts). If you want to learn about news concerning the rise of the far right, science issues, especially evolution and global warming, or fabulous music clips, LGF is the place to hang.

Mind Hacks
Mind Hacks is a wonderfully entertaining and fascinating blog all about cognitive science. It's enlightening, funny, bizarre, and always worth checking out.

South Jerusalem
South Jerusalem is a blog written by Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman that deal with Israeli politics from a progressive though religious perspective. Consistently good analysis of what's going on in Israel.

Through A Glass Darkly
Through A Glass Darkly is a wonderful blog written by a friend of mine, David Opderbeck, that deals primarily with issues of faith and science, especially evolutionary science.

Andrew Sullivan
The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan is consistently enjoyable reading even if I don't agree with him all of the time. It's also one of the most prolific blogs out there, posting numerous times every day. Always worth checking out.

The Way of Improvement Leads Home
The Way of Improvement Leads Home is also a new blog that I've only recently started following. But it has wowed me with its handling of issues of America's founding and the role of religion, always a very contentious and thorny issue. They are one of the few sites I've seen that's actually "fair and balanced" when it comes to this issue!

Obviously there could be many more, and these are listed in no particular order, so don't assume primacy by the order listed.

What would you list as your favorite blogs?

(edit)
Exploring Our Matrix
Here's one that I intended to include all along, but mixed it up with another blog above. This is the one written by my friend James McGrath, which like David's blog above, also deals extensively with faith and science issues. Always worth the read! (hopefully this is my last edit on this post!)

Don't Drink the Kool Aid.

Isaac Asimov on the Relativity of Wrong

Here's the original link. 

h/t to James McGrath.

Isaac Asimov - The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14 No. 1, Fall 1989

---

The Relativity of Wrong

pg.. 35-44

I RECEIVED a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out just in case it might prove to be important. In the first sentence, the writer told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read on.)

It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the universe straight.

I didn't go into detail in the matter, but what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930.

These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see.

The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.

My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.

...When my friend the English literature expert tells me that in every century scientists think they have worked out the universe and are always wrong, what I want to know is how wrong are they? Are they always wrong to the same degree? Let's take an example.

In the early days of civilization, the general feeling was that the earth was flat. This was not because people were stupid, or because they were intent on believing silly things. They felt it was flat on the basis of sound evidence. It was not just a matter of "That's how it looks," because the earth does not look flat. It looks chaotically bumpy, with hills, valleys, ravines, cliffs, and so on.

Of course there are plains where, over limited areas, the earth's surface does look fairly flat. One of those plains is in the Tigris-Euphrates area, where the first historical civilization (one with writing) developed, that of the Sumerians.

Perhaps it was the appearance of the plain that persuaded the clever Sumerians to accept the generalization that the earth was flat; that if you somehow evened out all the elevations and depressions, you would be left with flatness. Contributing to the notion may have been the fact that stretches of water (ponds and lakes) looked pretty flat on quiet days.

Another way of looking at it is to ask what is the "curvature" of the earth's surface Over a considerable length, how much does the surface deviate (on the average) from perfect flatness. The flat-earth theory would make it seem that the surface doesn't deviate from flatness at all, that its curvature is 0 to the mile.

Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.

There were reasons, to be sure, to find the flat-earth theory unsatisfactory and, about 350 B.C., the Greek philosopher Aristotle summarized them. First, certain stars disappeared beyond the Southern Hemisphere as one traveled north, and beyond the Northern Hemisphere as one traveled south. Second, the earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always the arc of a circle. Third, here on the earth itself, ships disappeared beyond the horizon hull-first in whatever direction they were traveling.

All three observations could not be reasonably explained if the earth's surface were flat, but could be explained by assuming the earth to be a sphere.

What's more, Aristotle believed that all solid matter tended to move toward a common center, and if solid matter did this, it would end up as a sphere. A given volume of matter is, on the average, closer to a common center if it is a sphere than if it is any other shape whatever.

About a century after Aristotle, the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes noted that the sun cast a shadow of different lengths at different latitudes (all the shadows would be the same length if the earth's surface were flat). From the difference in shadow length, he calculated the size of the earthly sphere and it turned out to be 25,000 miles in circumference.

The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile, as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat earth to the spherical earth.

Mind you, even a tiny difference, such as that between 0 and 0.000126, can be extremely important. That difference mounts up. The earth cannot be mapped over large areas with any accuracy at all if the difference isn't taken into account and if the earth isn't considered a sphere rather than a flat surface. Long ocean voyages can't be undertaken with any reasonable way of locating one's own position in the ocean unless the earth is considered spherical rather than flat.

Furthermore, the flat earth presupposes the possibility of an infinite earth, or of the existence of an "end" to the surface. The spherical earth, however, postulates an earth that is both endless and yet finite, and it is the latter postulate that is consistent with all later findings.

So, although the flat-earth theory is only slightly wrong and is a credit to its inventors, all things considered, it is wrong enough to be discarded in favor of the spherical-earth theory.

And yet is the earth a sphere?

No, it is not a sphere; not in the strict mathematical sense. A sphere has certain mathematical properties&emdash;for instance, all diameters (that is, all straight lines that pass from one point on its surface, through the center, to another point on its surface) have the same length.

That, however, is not true of the earth. Various diameters of the earth differ in length.

What gave people the notion the earth wasn't a true sphere? To begin with, the sun and the moon have outlines that are perfect circles within the limits of measurement in the early days of the telescope. This is consistent with the supposition that the sun and the moon are perfectly spherical in shape.

However, when Jupiter and Saturn were observed by the first telescopic observers, it became quickly apparent that the outlines of those planets were not circles, but distinct eclipses. That meant that Jupiter and Saturn were not true spheres.

Isaac Newton, toward the end of the seventeenth century, showed that a massive body would form a sphere under the pull of gravitational forces (exactly as Aristotle had argued), but only if it were not rotating. If it were rotating, a centrifugal effect would be set up that would lift the body's substance against gravity, and this effect would be greater the closer to the equator you progressed. The effect would also be greater the more rapidly a spherical object rotated, and Jupiter and Saturn rotated very rapidly indeed.

The earth rotated much more slowly than Jupiter or Saturn so the effect should be smaller, but it should still be there. Actual measurements of the curvature of the earth were carried out in the eighteenth century and Newton was proved correct.

The earth has an equatorial bulge, in other words. It is flattened at the poles. It is an "oblate spheroid" rather than a sphere. This means that the various diameters of the earth differ in length. The longest diameters are any of those that stretch from one point on the equator to an opposite point on the equator. This "equatorial diameter" is 12,755 kilometers (7,927 miles). The shortest diameter is from the North Pole to the South Pole and this "polar diameter" is 12,711 kilometers (7,900 miles).

The difference between the longest and shortest diameters is 44 kilometers (27 miles), and that means that the "oblateness" of the earth (its departure from true sphericity) is 44/12755, or 0.0034. This amounts to l/3 of 1 percent.

To put it another way, on a flat surface, curvature is 0 per mile everywhere. On the earth's spherical surface, curvature is 0.000126 per mile everywhere (or 8 inches per mile). On the earth's oblate spheroidal surface, the curvature varies from 7.973 inches to the mile to 8.027 inches to the mile.

The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the earth as a sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the earth as flat.

Even the oblate-spheroidal notion of the earth is wrong, strictly speaking. In 1958, when the satellite Vanguard I was put into orbit about the earth, it was able to measure the local gravitational pull of the earth--and therefore its shape--with unprecedented precision. It turned out that the equatorial bulge south of the equator was slightly bulgier than the bulge north of the equator, and that the South Pole sea level was slightly nearer the center of the earth than the North Pole sea level was.

There seemed no other way of describing this than by saying the earth was pear-shaped, and at once many people decided that the earth was nothing like a sphere but was shaped like a Bartlett pear dangling in space. Actually, the pearlike deviation from oblate-spheroid perfect was a matter of yards rather than miles, and the adjustment of curvature was in the millionths of an inch per mile.

In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after.

What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.

This can be pointed out in many cases other than just the shape of the earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured.

Copernicus switched from an earth-centered planetary system to a sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky, and eventually the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long.

Again, it is because the geological formations of the earth change so slowly and the living things upon it evolve so slowly that it seemed reasonable at first to suppose that there was no change and that the earth and life always existed as they do today. If that were so, it would make no difference whether the earth and life were billions of years old or thousands. Thousands were easier to grasp.

But when careful observation showed that the earth and life were changing at a rate that was very tiny but not zero, then it became clear that the earth and life had to be very old. Modern geology came into being, and so did the notion of biological evolution.

If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times. It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly.

Since the refinements in theory grow smaller and smaller, even quite ancient theories must have been sufficiently right to allow advances to be made; advances that were not wiped out by subsequent refinements.

The Greeks introduced the notion of latitude and longitude, for instance, and made reasonable maps of the Mediterranean basin even without taking sphericity into account, and we still use latitude and longitude today.

The Sumerians were probably the first to establish the principle that planetary movements in the sky exhibit regularity and can be predicted, and they proceeded to work out ways of doing so even though they assumed the earth to be the center of the universe. Their measurements have been enormously refined but the principle remains.

Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.

New Hawaii Governor Will Work to Disprove "Birther" Controversy, and Some Further Thoughts on the Dangerous Intersection of Conspiratorial Thinking and Extremism

The newly elected Governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, is planning on doing all he can to counteract the continuing "birther" controversy among anti-Obama conspiracy theorists. He knew the Obama's when Barack was only an infant, so he knows from personal experience that he was born there and not in Kenya (or in Indonesia, Mars, Alpha Centauri). The facts, as the article makes clear, have already proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the President was in fact born here in the U.S. on August 4, 1961 in Hawaii. But as anyone knows when dealing with a conspiracy theorist, "facts" don't really matter. Birthers, like any other conspiracists, are basically gnostic in how they see the world. They, and the few like them, have the "special" knowledge that explains how the world "really" works.

This is a type of Euclidean model of seeing and understanding history. It worked within a very small framework, but as we've grown in our understanding of the larger world, it became more and more distorted because of several basic flaws in its understanding of how the world really works. Eventually, it leads to wildly distorted theories having to constantly adjust "facts" so that the system can stay intact. Eventually as well, the person or group that holds to these basically flawed premises, either go mad or reject this understanding for something that actually coheres with reality more accurately. In other words, these conspiracy theorists need to have their own Copernican Revolution in their thinking. The world doesn't revolve around us, we revolve around it.

Likewise, this mindset is also driven by a deep seated fear and anxiety (often legitimate in unstable times), combined with a narcissistic and egocentric impulse which desperately needs a scapegoat so as to place blame on the "other" whoever that "other" may be. These people also tend to strongly believe the myth of their own innate innocence. This Myth of Innocence, cannot accept that they are ever guilty of wrong doing, whether as individuals or as a group. Therefore they see the world in sharply dichotomous terms, us/them, black/white, good/evil, etc. This Manichean mindset combined with the aforementioned Gnostic impulse makes for a powerful ideological and intellectual witches brew. It both shuts our any competing truth claims as being part of the vast conspiracy and reinforces the most extreme sentiments within the "in" group.

When conspiratorial thinking is combined with extremist thinking (they often do exist together, though not necessarily. There are numerous "mainstream" conspiracy theorists out there) this potentially deadly dance between these two impulses can lead to violence. Of course we've seen far too many examples already of that deadly dynamic at work, whether among radical Islamists, Christian Nationalists, Jewish Ultra-nationalists, or fringe groups/cults. For those who don't buy into these conspiracy theories, but who have friends or family who do, it's important to both share with them the relevant facts and sources, but also to listen to the concerns of the person who does buy into these theories. As mentioned above, the fear and anxiety driving these notions is often legitimate, caused by actual hardship in their lives and the lives of many around them. This combination of gently but firmly confronting them with facts and real knowledge while listening in a respectful way to their real concerns may be what it takes to walk them back from this dualistic and ultimately self destructive mentality.

But if a person or a group does go over the tipping point, the tactic does need to change. Those who are closest can and should continue to persuade them away from this mindset, but when conspiratorial thinking is combined with extremism it's also appropriate to observe more intentionally those who are thinking and acting this way. Just as a person who descends for neurosis into psychosis needs closer oversight and maybe even intervention, so groups of people likewise need to be monitored more closely and if need be, intercepted before violence breaks out. Now admittedly this very act of monitoring and intercepting will only reinforce the conspiratorial thinking of these people and groups. To some degree that's unavoidable and shouldn't deter public officials or even concerned friends/family from doing so.

Again, if a family member or friend comes to believe they're the Prophet Elijah and begins walking into heavy traffic convinced they're invincible, we don't stand by for fear of reinforcing their psychosis. We call the police or an ambulance so that they won't do themselves or anyone else any harm, even if in doing this we incur the wrath of that family member or friend. So likewise we must be diligent in confronting conspiracy theories not founded in reality, but fear and simplistic thinking. And we must do the same when it comes to extremist thinking, especially when it combines with conspiratorial thinking, since this combination has proven to be so dangerous time and time again.

In the New York Times' article above, it ends on the hopeful note of "letting the facts speak for themselves." I wish I could be so hopeful that letting the "facts speak for themselves" will be enough. Facts are obviously important, but we must take into account that humans are also just as driven by their passions as by their intellect. To the degree we don't take this into consideration our analysis and therefore our engagement will be inadequate at best, and may end up reinforcing the very dynamic we want to minimize.

A Stunning Video of Last Night's Lunar Eclipse

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.


And the moon shall turn to blood...

A Wonderful Conversation Between Robert George and Cornel West

Can we speak to each other beyond our ideological divide? Here, in this BlogginheadsTV conversation between Robert George, a conservative Catholic, and Cornel West, a progressive Baptist, both professors at Princeton University, we see a wonderful possibility of civility and mutual respect even though they sharply disagree with the means to the end of human flourishing. One of the commonalities between them is their Christian faith, which includes a serious assessment of human brokenness, thus leading to a level of humility regarding all systems, whether public or private. Listening to their dialogue, a rare thing in our contentious and divisive ideological environment, spoke to me and my own convictions as few other dialogues have.

What is the Evolutionary Benefit of Art?

Is art only a more highly developed offshoot of our drive to procreate? In other words, is art a nice accident of our cognitive abilities being a desired feature for mating purposes? And on a more basic level, is art or any other human behavior always and only predicated on propagation of the species? Is everything always about sex?

Rethinking Our Philosophy of Education

An excellent talk given about how modern compulsory public education came into being based upon both enlightenment notions and right at the advent of the industrial revolution, thus resulting in factory education.

An Invitation to Justice

An Invitation to Justice from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

I found this at Joel Hunter's personal website and thought it was worth sharing.

Virtual Virtue

The internet is an interesting place. It’s a treasure trove of information and disinformation, fact checking and wild conspiracy theories, reasoned debate and all out flame wars. The technological advances we see before our eyes with its instant information and equally instant gratification offer both great opportunity and great temptation. My ability to research a topic has immeasurably increased since the advent of the online, but I’ve also been assaulted with the trivial at levels beyond imagination.

The internet is the human condition writ large in all its glory, depravity and absurdity.

If we’re to entertain our better angels in our online encounters, I suggest that we should consider a few moral guidelines to help us on the way:

Would you say what you’ve just typed to your own child, your parents, your closest friend?

Ah, but this person isn’t any of these. They’re my ideological, theological, political, etc., opponent. It’s my responsibility to show them what’s right and how wrong they are. I can’t help it if they’re stupid, insane, or evil. That’s their problem, not mine. I just have to tell them what’s true.

Ah. What’s true. Yes. Such an easy concept to come to complete certainty about. But there’s one little problem. What if your interlocutor feels the same way? Which certainty holds sway?

I am a creature of the internet if any person is. I’m officially an addict of facebook (just ask my friends) after having resisted it for some time. I tweet at will. I blog incessantly. I post on political, scientific and theological blogs daily, often on controversial issues. And as I’ve dived into the deep of the internet I’ve seen behavior that has been shocking, to say the least, and not least of all, my own. We live in the age of opinion, the era of arrogance, the pontification of the personal. And I’ve seen my own worst impulses of self affirmation at other’s expense expressed in all its inglorious permutations.

Above I asked if you would be willing to say to a loved one what you type in an online discussion. Now I want to ask one more question:

Can you (I) be wrong?

I have my beliefs. Anyone who knows me knows that. Whether it’s about religion, politics, science, or even art and literature or music, I have my strong opinions. But I have also changed my views on several subjects, both political and religious, and even on the truly important stuff like music and sports! If we can change our views on an issue that’s important to us, this ought to remind us that what we know is always moderated and quite often distorted by our cultural environment, whether at the personal level of our own families, or at the larger level of our ethnic or national or religious allegiances. As I said in my previous post about the Politics of Brokenness, if we acknowledge our part in the larger brokenness that exists, then there is some hope that we can speak across the divide that confronts us both politically and religiously, but also even within ourselves.

So it’s not if we can do this. We already know it can be done. Others have paved the way before us: Gandhi, Day, King, etc. The question that confronts us is whether we’re willing to do so.
Are we willing to act in a spirit of generosity even in the face of those who are not generous?
Are we willing to admit that what we believe is tenuous, subject to change, and thus allow that our debater might have something good to say?

Ben Witherington on Jesus and Money

Jesus and Money from CPX on Vimeo.

An excellent interview with theologian Ben Witherington III concerning scripture's view of our relationship to money and economics.