Filed under: Uncategorized
There will be no blogging for another two weeks probably. I’m in the midst of final exam, ISU, and report card purgatory.
Ever wonder why you constantly check your email and voicemail? The reason is we never know when we will receive one. A Skinnerian study found that when rats were given food pellets regularly, they would depress the food lever around the time the pellets were to be dispensed. When they were given food pellets irregularly, they depressed the lever obsessively.
(HT: CBC)
After watching the Republican debate, Doug Wilson weighs in with why limited government conservatism is incompatible with a large American military:
Third, as a practical matter, the United States is now a military hyper-power. How it would be possible to have the governmental apparatus that this requires (which is gi-normous), and have alongside it a minimal domestic state . . . I just don’t see how that could work. It seems to me that it would set the stage for a military government. If the rest of the government shrank to the size it ought to be, and the military stayed right where it is, how would this not put ninety percent of the federal budget straight into the Pentagon? And what would be the ramifications of that?
Filed under: Politics
Andrew Sullivan links to McSweeney’s humorous guide to the current Democratic candidates:
BARACK OBAMA
Pro: Articulate; resembles foxy actor Blair Underwood.
Con: L.A. Law was kind of overrated now that you think about it.
OPTIMUS PRIME
Pro: Size; power; ability to emit short-range optic blasts.
Con: Potential attack ad: “Sometimes Optimus Prime is a robot, other times a truck. Which is it, Mr. Prime? America deserves a leader that doesn’t transform whenever it’s convenient.”
JIMMY CARTER
Pro: Nobel Prize winner; available; just as good at not knowing what the hell to do about Iran as anyone else.
Con: Judging by photos, approximately 415 years old.
Mohsin Hamid has written what looks like a fantastic read with The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The novel is about a Pakistani man named Changez who exchanges life in Pakistan for a successful life in the U.S. Changez’s life in entails a dramatic rise and fall; the fall leading him to return to his native Pakistan.
The book is a one person narrative between a Changez and an American that takes place in Pakistan. Hamid writes,
Well, it’s this dramatic monologue where this Pakistani man is speaking to this American man [and they are suspicious of each other]. I like that frame, because it parallels the way the world looks at each other. Pakistan, or the Muslim world, looks at America and the West, and wonders exactly that: Are you out to get us? Are you a bunch of completely aggressive maniacs or are you people we see on Seinfeld and Friends? Similarly, America wonders that about the Muslim world: Are you a bunch of terrorists, or just regular people with families and kids? That sense of ambiguity, or not knowing, I think, is what the frame allows me to capture.
My only criticism of Hamid is his desire to separate religion from politics in his work. He wants to show how we have confused “the idea of religion with people’s very real and pragmatic struggles.” This is a glaring oversight. Of course, religion is one of humanity’s very real and is also a very pragmatic struggle. When writing about the East, I’m not sure if divorcing religion from any discussion will really lead to an accurate portrait. Then again, that’s something you’d probably forget at Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
In Apologetics to the Glory of God, John Frame defines theological liberalism as a belief that does not find it’s ultimate standard in the word of God. This seems to be an adequate definition for Protestantism. Clearly, it’s not adequate for Roman Catholics.
If Frame’s definition is correct then at least certain aspects of modern evangelical thought can be properly characterized as “theologically liberal.”
And yes, “theological liberal” ought to be a theological swear word.
Christopher Hitchens may not believe that he is as religious as Wilson, but he is. Of course, he may not lay prostate before statues of the “Virgin” Mary, but his worldview is every bit as religious as a devout South American Catholic. The reason being because like Roman Catholics, Hitchen’s beliefs are ultimately grounded in faith-presuppositions. His beliefs also offers a comprehensive worldview and comprehensive solutions to the problems that plague humanity. Though it may not look religious, it certainly functions as a religion.
I have yet to give the debate a thorough reading. At it’s heart though is a question that is the greatest question to confront humanity.
Everyone is confronted with the fact that the universe contains persons and impersonal structures. The important question is, which is more fundamental? Do the impersonal structures ground the personal (and thus, us) or does the personal ground the impersonal?
If the impersonal grounds the personal as Hitchens will no doubt argue, what he calls reason and value are nothing more than chance consequences of random events. If so, how can you ever trust your cognitive processes? (HT: a little Frame and Plantingean reductio)
I love Doug Wilson. I love Credenda/Agenda. Christopher Hitchens – not a bad chap to read either. You can imagine then how I giggled like a 14 year old girl with a pony when I discovered this morning that Doug Wilson will be debating Christopher Hitchens on Christianity Today’s Liveblog. See the announcement here.
Wilson posted the announcement on his blog over here. The man is hilarious. In order to see why this is funny you need to click here.
