Living an Extra Seven Years - Introduction

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5
In 1912, Dr. Isaac Alder suggested that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Immediately everyone stopped smoking. Actually, that’s not true at all. He was promptly and almost universally ignored. It took another four decades before anyone really listened. By 1957, the evidence had accumulated and the Surgeon General declared that smoking caused cancer. One year after this announcement, 44% of Americans believed smoking caused lung cancer. In 1964, “Smoking and Health” was published, and laws started getting passed restricting smoking, from advertisements to taxes (8). In 1968, 78% of Americans believed smoking caused lung cancer. Unfortunately, knowing something is good for you is not the same thing as doing what’s good for you.

For decades we didn’t know for sure if smoking was bad for you. Movie stars and cool kids pushed the habit, and when we found out it was bad, it was too late. People were already addicted. For those who did quit, severe damage was already done. The slowness of the research, the industry lobbying, and the lack of will on the part of the government and public cost countless lives.

Smoking remains to be one of the most important risk factors for heart disease and cancer. It’s not just hypothetical risk. Life insurance, an industry which bets on your life and death, is keenly aware of this risk and charges smokers much more because of this high risk. A smoker has a 70% higher annual risk of death than a nonsmoker (8). Smoking is the single best observable factor in determining your risk of dying. Or at least it was. What if I told you that there’s another behavior that is even better at tracking with lifespan than smoking is?

People who don’t demonstrate this behavior have an 87% higher annual risk of than those who do (9). A 20 year old who did engage in this behavior throughout his life would live 7 years longer than one who didn’t (for blacks, it’s even better: 14 years longer). You might be thinking you know what it is: exercise! Nope. Exercise is good, but not that good. Those who do what the American Medical Association tells them to do (1400 calories per week of exercise; 30 minutes daily) (2) have a 29% lower annual risk of death(1). What about losing weight? Those who are normal weight (BMI <24) have a 25% lower annual risk of death compared to those who are overweight (BMI >26) (1). What could this behavior be? What could be more important than what our doctors talk about when we visit? What’s more important than smoking? What’s more important than exercise? What’s more important than weight loss?

Church attendance. People who never go to church(3) have an 87% increased chance of dropping dead compared to those that attend more than weekly. Statistically speaking, never going to church is worse for your health than smoking a pack a day for the rest of your life (9). I’m not joking. This is an effect that has been seen in dozens of studies over the last thirty or so years. Scientists really don’t like it, but it’s there, and it’s real.

We have lots of evidence that church attendees have a lower risk of dying. We have so much data in these studies, we can even ‘pool’ it, adding up the results of many studies into one “meta” analytic study. The best meta study that did this found, after looking at a total of over 125,000 people in 42 separate investigations, the odds of a churchgoer surviving were better than a non-churchgoer (10).

But how can this be? Perhaps churchgoers are just goody-two-shoes who never smoke or drink or cuss. To evaluate that theory, I need to tell a story.

[Note: this is the first of a 5-part post. The references for all 5 will be posted here in the first post]

References

(1) Paffenbarger, RS; Hyde, RT; Wing, AL; Lee, IM; Jung, DL; Kampert, JB. The Association Of Changes In Physical-Activity Level And Other Life-Style Characteristics With Mortality Among Men. NEJM, 328 (8): 538-545 Feb 25 1993.

(2) Pate RR; Pratt M; Blair SN; Wilmore JH; et. al. Physical Activity and Public Health: A Recommendation From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Sports Medicine. JAMA. 1995;273(5):402-407.

(3) Most of the studies are representative US populations and so are literally measuring church attendance. Others look at ‘religious service attendance’ and find the same thing. I will use ‘church attendance’ in this article as these results do not have enough data to religious services of other faiths (though it is my belief that this would be true).

(4) Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there' – xkcd.com/552/ . Also, I am among those who are not happy about the monopoly that the Randomized Control Trial has on science. It’s a good technique, but not the only good technique.

(5) Sloan, RP. Should physicians prescribe religious activities? NEJM 342(25): 1913-1916 JUN 22 2000

(6) Powell, LH; Shahabi, L; Thoresen, CE. Religion and spirituality - Linkages to physical health. AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, 58 (1): 36-52 JAN 2003

(7) I say supernatural not to give up the search, but to focus it. The effect might be mediated through an undiscovered non-classical mechanism; perhaps it is a hyper-dimensional effect, perhaps it is quantum mechanical. With regard to unsolved mysteries, we must always be ready for a paradigm shift to be hiding underneath it.

(8) “The Reports of the Surgeon General” <http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/NN/Views/Exhibit/narrative/smoking.html>

(9) Hummer RA; Rogers RG; Nam CB; Ellison CG. Religious Involvement and U.S. Adult Mortality. Demography 36(2): 273-285 May 1999

(10) McCullough ME, Hoyt WT, Larson DB, Koenig HG, Thoresen C. Religious involvement and mortality: a meta-analytic review. Health Psychol.19(3):211-22 2000 May

(11) FASTSTATS. Accessed on 10/23/2010. Centers for Disease Control. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm>

(12) American FactFinder. Accessed on 10/23/2010. US Census Bureau. <http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en>

(13) US Population: 310,546,653. US Mortality rate: 803.6 per 100,000.

(14) Mokdad AH; Marks JS; Stroup DF; Gerberding JL . Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000 JAMA. 2004;291:1238-1245

(15) This trend is supported by the meta-study (reference 10) but with a smaller magnitude. It reports that the increased chance of survival for those who attend is 25% after adjustment. The difference is probably because of a dose-effect in the Hummer paper (reference 9); they didn’t just measure attender/non-attender, but the frequency of attendance. Running 50 minutes every day is better for you than running 5 minutes, and so it seems that going to church more than weekly is better for you than going only on Christmas and Easter. The data in the Hummer paper does appear to agree with the more modest 25% if you ignore the dose-effect and pool all church attenders together.

Showdown at Pizz’a Chicago

“One: if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Two: objective moral values do exist. Three: therefore, God exists,” I said, explaining the moral argument for the existence of God to my a few Christian classmates over Pizz’a Chicago. This argument is one of the oldest and best available to the Theist; for those interested in the argument itself, I would commend you to the work of William Lane Craig. We had just finished a wonderful hike in the mist and trees of the Santa Cruz Mountains and warming up around a fire at my place. We were beginning a lively philosophy discussion. For anyone who knows me, you know that there aren’t too many better possible days. The pizza was delicious (the “Al Capone”; who’d have thought pecans go well on pizza?), and it was looking like it would be the perfect end to a perfect day.

Then there was a person standing over us at the end of our table. It was the man from the next table. He was a short man in his fifties, balding slightly, wearing a full beard with flecks of grey. Surprised, I gave him my attention. He said, “We can hear you from over there. And, you’re wrong!” I suppose I had been a bit loud; it was a pizza joint, after all, and I had to raise my voice to get it across the table. I wondered which of the two premises he disagreed with (I guessed it was the first; this is the approach most Atheists take). I started gesturing for him to join our conversation, but he had already turned around and returned to his seat, next to what appeared to be his high school-aged son and elementary school-aged daughter.

He shot a glance over to me, to see what effect his breach in manners had caused. Perhaps he was hoping for shock, outrage or anger. I don’t think he was expecting polite curiosity. “Which premise?” I asked him. “Both of them!” he shot back, surprised and not looking at me. “Please explain,” I offered politely, again gesturing to the empty seat next to me. At this point, the man came to his senses. He did the most rational thing a mature thinker could have in such a situation: he utterly ignored me.

After this brash interruption of our conversation, I composed myself. I soon continued my exposition of the argument to my friends and the conversation continued pleasantly. All the while, in the back of my mind, I was thinking how to repay this guy. He had interrupted my conversation on a topic which was extremely important. He tried to embarrass me in public and in front of my friends. He wanted to make me look bad and show off to his kids. And then I thought of a way. He’d be so pissed. It would shame him in front of his kids and he’d never be able to get me back. He’d never forget me. Ever. It was perfect.

I called the waitress over, gave her my credit card, and quietly paid for his family’s dinner.

My friends and I finished our pizza, and got up to leave. I walked over to the man’s table while they were still unaware of what I had done and I said warmly, “Enjoy your dinner!” For those unaware of American customs, the proper response would have been something like, “Thank you.” Perhaps this courtesy had shocked the man into silence, or perhaps he was still ignoring me. Maybe his mouth was full. In any case, it was his son who responded with an accusatory tone that ought to be reserved only for the basest of criminals, “You can’t prove God! It’s not falsifiable and therefore false!” Recovering, the man, with what he must have thought was an irrefutable disproof of my argument, said with the confidence of a mathematician delivering the conclusion to a proof, “William of Occam.” Now for those of you who are not experienced in Philosophy, William of Occam is a man and not himself an argument, or at least the words “William of Occam” do not compose a well-formed or convincing argument. But it seemed to be offered as one, which might suggest conversation was actually possible.

I started to respond that proof was possible, but they weren’t listening. I cannot now remember how I knew that they were not listening and desperately wanted me to leave. I don’t have a memory of them covering their ears with their hands, or shouting to drown out my words, or shooing me away like a dog, but however they did it, they communicated as much to me. Then the most unexpected thing of all happened: the daughter, in stark contrast to her family, showed me kindness. She stood up, walked over to me, and gave me a paper craft she had been working on all through dinner.

I walked out of the restaurant smiling. The man and I had battled in the pizza parlor, and I think both of us will remember the day for years to come. And I will treasure my prize, his daughter’s paper craft.

Venipuncture and the Essence of Love – Introduction

[This is a working "paper." I’m not sure all this (or the connected posts) is right, and would really love feedback on it]

Today we were practicing drawing blood on each other (everybody’s favorite day in medical school). My partner (who shall remain nameless), had trouble hitting a vein, and so I encouraged them to try again. And again. I now have 13 holes in my skin.

The person felt terrible. Part of it was pride (not being rock star doctors after 11 months of medical school instruction is infuriating for most of us here at Stanford). But part of it, and I would venture to say most of it, was because of the pain that the person caused me. I said that I was happy to be of service. And I really meant it. I was legitimately happier after the session; I was in a significantly more pleasant mood having served the person in this way (and, indirectly, a patient who would not have to get poked). The pain was significant, but the pleasure in service was far greater. But why? What theory of pleasure/pain was I working under? I’m no masochist; pain did not directly become pleasure. I searched for something encouraging to say. I said, “It’s an important part of my religion to love my neighbor as myself, and there aren’t too many opportunities to serve my classmates.” I’m not sure it helped much.

Later in the day, I thought about what I said. Why was it that I connected love with service, and service with pain? I thought of Jesus’ words: “No greater love hath a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (Jhn 15:13). Christ was no hypocrite; He gave up His life for us day by day in Palestine, and then literally, dying on the cross. But why is that the greatest love? Why isn’t it, “No greater love hath a man than this, that he benefit his friends maximally”? Why was suffering so connected to the Christian definition of love? This is a really important question that I do not have a good answer for yet but will be praying and thinking about in the days, weeks and probably years to come.

The why is still a mystery to me. But the what is clear: love as Christ defines and demonstrates it, is sacrifice. But if that is true, it changes everything. Everyone agrees with “love thy neighbour as thyself,” but the statement has entirely different meanings if love is sacrifice or if love is benefit. We all seek love, and to a lesser extent, we seek to love in relationships and in society. Jesus’ flip of the definition of love threatens to change everything that we thought we knew. Over the next few posts, I’ll discuss some of these implications.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

On Evangelicals’ Danger and Hope

When Evangelical churches consider giving (they are the only churches which I have first-hand experience with), their first impulse is to maximize salvations. They want to work in places that are “unreached.” Then they look for missionary organizations to win souls. Some of them will go one step further, and support explicitly Christian organizations to serve the poor, but only so long as they do it in Christ’s name. Never would they give to a ‘secular’ charity (for how would the people hear the Gospel, or know from whence the goodness comes)?

Do not misunderstand what I am about to say. I believe in missions, and in evangelism. Of any single action, it is still, in my mind, the most valuable; it is a deed with the highest honor. But there are other parts, essential parts, of Christianity which have been eclipsed by our blind pursuit of this highest honor. Any virtue or impulse may be corrupted if it is sought at the cost of all others. As C.S. Lewis points out on the dangers of focusing purely on the love of humanity, “If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials ‘for the sake of humanity,’ and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.” So, I think, if we hyper-focus on missions and evangelism, we will become a cruel and loveless church.

One commandment of God which is almost completely ignored by us today is charity for our brethren in Christ. Paul tells us, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all [men], especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10) and the author of Hebrews reminds us, “For God [is] not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister” (Hbr 6:10).

We do a mediocre job locally with the poor in general with food drives and homeless shelters. But we do an appalling job of providing for poor brethren abroad. We know generally about poverty and how we are to provide for the poor. But we forget that we have a special obligation to poor Christians.

But who takes collections for poor believers today? How high a priority in the modern Church are poor abroad? We often see poverty work only as a means to the end of evangelism. How many church dollars go to some few thousands of pagans in the Pacific Islands, while millions of our brothers starve in Africa? We send missionaries to the “10/40 window” because there are few Christians there. But how many of us really care about the plight of our brothers in that same window? How many sermons are preached on the plight of the brethren in that window? I have not heard one. We are letting our brothers starve so that we can first win new converts. This ought not be so. We ought to first take care of our own family , and then seek to serve others.

And were we not commanded to? Who are the sheep in Jesus’ Matthew 25 parable? Was it those who were powerful missionaries? Were the goats sent to hell for their lack of evangelism? No. It was for a lack of charity to “the least of these my brethren” (Mat 25:40). Those who saw Christ’s brethren in prison or naked or hungry and did nothing were sent to hell. And who are Christ’s brethren? He tells us: “he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!” (Mat 12:49).

And where are the least? Where are the hungry, poor, imprisoned Christians? They are in the developing world. The centroid of Christianity is moving back again to the south and east, where there is still terrible poverty, disease and death. There is again a need amongst our brethren to the south and east. It is not now in Jerusalem, but in Africa and Asia.

Remember also Paul’s warning, “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Ti 5:8). John also questions the faith of those who fail this duty, “But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels [of compassion] from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1Jo 3:17). We Evangelicals struggle with hypocrisy, with doctrine, with patience and lust. But there is no place where we are closer to hell than in our apathy about the poverty of our brothers abroad.

We care more for the material condition of the unsaved than our own family. After coming to Kenya, I’ve often been asked about the missionary opportunities and never about the poor condition of the brethren. And I was not offered help to relieve their condition, but instead, Bibles. Bibles are good in themselves, and so are missions. But the fact that the condition of our brothers in Kenya is not even thought of is damning. In the present and manifest distress, the fact that church global missions budgets are often an hundredfold higher than global poverty budgets is damning. We must repent.

Providing for our own family is of utmost concern. Of what other duty which if we neglect it, are we promised hell (Mat 25:46), called worse than infidels (1Ti 5:8), said we abide in death (1Jo 3:14) or asked how the love of God could abide in us (1Jo 3:18)? What other duty was so important to distract Paul, the missionary’s missionary, from missions (Rom 15:26, 1Cr 16:3, 2Cr 8:2)?

But consider the wonderful opportunity God has arranged for us. For where we are poor, our brothers are rich; and where we are rich, they are poor. We should remember: we in the West were made rich in money but poor in spirit. Consider the power of the Holy Spirit, spreading Christianity like a wildfire across China, India and the rest of the developed world. Missionaries, evangelists and prophets are being raised up in multitudes by the Spirit there. And what of us in the West? Though we have a heritage rich in Missions and Evangelism in the First and Second Great Awakenings, now it seems to be God’s will that the fire be cooled.

But in the place of that fiery passion, God has blessed us instead with the riches of this world. We are the most productive people ever to have lived. We are far richer than the Romans, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Byzantines and the Britons. We have money, business, ingenuity, organization and technology. We are better equipped than any other people in the history of the world to end the desperation of poverty, an affliction persistent since the Fall of Man. We are the first generation in the history of the world with the ability to actually do it.

Missions is a higher calling indeed (1Cr 12:28), but not one that we are particularly good at. I came to Kenya thinking there was some opportunity for missions. I soon realized that I had exchanged an excellent mission field for a poor one. Though God has given me gifts in evangelism, there were fewer opportunities in a rural village in Kenya than in the ivy halls of Stanford. Christianity is stronger in Kenya than it is anywhere I have seen in the US, and I found myself especially ill-equipped to evangelize, particularly when compared to my fiery brothers here.

While not given particular gifts in evangelism, we as a culture have powerful and unprecedented gifts in “healings, helps, governments” (1Co 12:28); let us use these to their utmost, while ever coveting the greater gifts of our brothers in the developing world. We have a greater ability to give than any people at any other time in the history of the world. One in our middle class has a greater ability to give than even kings and merchants of old. So let us give in abundance and “with simplicity” (Rom 12:8).

And let us never forget the other edge of the sword of opportunity; it cuts both ways. “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required” (Luke 12:48). We will not be held guiltless if we squander the greatest opportunity for generosity in the history of the world. And we will surely draw close to hell if we close our hearts to our brothers.

Let this generation of Evangelicals be remembered as our great forbears in Britain were. Two centuries ago, William Wilberforce and his fellows ended the slave trade in Britain and will be forever remembered for it, both on earth and in heaven. Let Evangelicals of this generation be remembered not as those whose greedy hearts were cold, but as those who set the captives of poverty free, those who brought food and shelter forever to billions. Let us act like the Philadelphians, the city of love for the brethren, a Church that keeps God’s word to provide for our Christian brothers and for the poor. And then we can receive Christ’ promise, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, [which is] new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and [I will write upon him] my new name” (Rev 3:12).

Poverty of Liberty

I was considering the best way to define poverty, and I think I may have stumbled across a very old idea that might fit the bill:

“ …all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Perhaps “poverty” is when you lack life, liberty or the ability to pursue happiness?
Poverty can certainly limit these human rights. Life can be limited by starvation the same as it can be provided by an invading nation or a murderer. The government has a commission to prevent the violation of the right in the case of the latter, but which it is the job of the government to prevent.

The lack of liberty can come in many forms. It may not just be liberty in the sense of suffrage, but also in terms of education and beliefs about your own capacity. A slave working on a plantation certainly lacks liberty, but so does a factory worker who cannot leave his situation or promise a better one to his children. Likewise, a person with the ability to better his situation may have been convinced that he is unable, and perception becomes reality.

Limitations of liberty
If a person wants to run a marathon, three things can limit her. The first and most obvious is physical ability; can the person’s legs last for 26.2 miles? Secondly, does a physically capable person believe she can run the distance? And finally, is she willing to do it? She needs physical ability, belief in her ability, and wiliness to actually run. If any one of these things is lacking, she will not be able to complete a marathon. Her freedom is to run a marathon is limited by her body, her mind and her spirit.

The same is true of a poor person. A person may not have liberty or the ability to pursue happiness because they are physically unable (they lack the food to survive), mentally unable (they do not know or believe they can advance), or spiritually unable (they are unwilling to better their situation). To truly have liberty, all three kinds of barriers must be removed.
Most poverty work centers around the first one. We boost income, and build clinics. Most people believe that’s all there is to poverty. But, if liberty is the concern, then simply addressing physical barriers is insufficient.

There are many places with an overbuilt medical infrastructure; physical barriers are reduced. But the buildings remain empty. Mothers still birth their children at home and rarely use the clinic. In many of these places, they know that they’re supposed to give birth in a hospital and that it’s safer. But they prefer their homes. They have every physical and mental barrier removed; some simply lack the willingness.

Mental barriers are also sometimes addressed in development work. And even those who do trainings to address mental shortcomings will not be fully successful if they stop simply at information transfer.

Do we stop because it’s hard? Or because we’d have to address a culture and a preference (both of which are off-limits to relativists)? Changing minds like this is really really hard. But it’s what pastors, motivational speakers and advertising executives make a living doing: affecting people’s willingness to do things. Some of their job is removing physical or mental barriers; but most of it is giving people a spirit or desire to do a certain thing. And we cannot forget this very important piece of liberty.

Pursuit of Happiness
The ability to pursue happiness is a beautiful thing. It is not a guarantee of happiness itself. It is not the ability to hold property (Locke’s version). It is the abstract idea that one can seek happiness in whatever way one wants. Nobody can provide or force someone to be happy; the farthest one can go is to give another the ability to pursue happiness. This is a particularly hard place to stop, but a critical one. We can give liberty and freedom, but we cannot in the next moment take it away to force what we think will bring happiness. Happiness cannot be coerced. People must be truly free to choose misery, and we must not stop them, for to do so would be to undermine liberty and subverting the deeper happiness it brings.

We can build clinics, teach mothers about them, and advertise them. We can work with chiefs and elders to open their minds to the benefits of clinic birth. We can remove economic, social, and cultural barriers. But if a woman still chooses to give birth at home, we must let her.

Freedom and Its Spread

Freedom is not just government type; it’s not just being able to vote. It’s the ability to make choices and to live a full life. It’s climbing upward and giving your children a better situation you had. There are still billions lacking the promise our Founding Fathers sought to give to us.
But how does the flame of freedom spread beyond the shores of the United States? It’s no longer as simple as throwing off a single oppressive king with an eloquent letter. The oppressors are more than political, and so the solutions must be also; the answer is no longer simply in government or a good constitution.

The poor need a Declaration of Independence. They wouldn’t be throwing off an oppressive government, but an oppressive system. Parts of that system are sentient and malicious (dictators, oppressive companies) and parts of it are non-sentient (viruses, climate). And just as the Declaration of Independence wasn’t itself a new system, it made it clear that one would soon be necessary. The War of Independence that must inevitably follow will be fought on the soil of many foreign nations.

I pray that I may fight as their ally.

The Challenge of Liberty Poverty
The challenge with this definition is that it is the most difficult to quantify. It is the most abstract (which, if you believe Plato, means it’s potentially closer to truth than the less abstract ones). Donors don’t want abstract concepts. They, increasingly, want numbers. But this can be our ideal, the thing we really have in mind when we enter a community and want to help. It’s not about money, or property, or even improving conditions. It’s about Liberty.

To Promote the General Welfare

Or Why Utilitarianism works better than Kantianism in Government [4]

The classic story goes like this. Jim is in Venezuela on vacation. He come to a village where there are twenty villagers tied up and standing against a wall. An armed man in camouflage approaches him and introduces himself as Pedro. He tells Jim that the villagers are being rebellious and these twenty would be executed to punish the town for its political leanings (for the sake of argument, they’re pro-Democratic). But, he’d let nineteen of them go if Jim would himself do one execution (to prove that even America doesn’t support this ‘rebellion’). What should Jim do?

The Kantian answer is that he should not kill the one and let the twenty die. Jim should follow a universal maxim like “You ought not murder innocent people,” regardless of the circumstances. The Utilitarian reasons that 1 dead < style="font-style: italic;">because of the circumstances. The Kantian’s concern is the soul; the Utilitarian’s concern is the body.

Kantian morality is very appealing when absolute rules are available. This is usually when it’s a matter of individual decision. For example, I believe that the following is universal maxim: “A man ought not sleep with a woman he is not married to.” I obey this and, if I violate this maxim, I believe I have done wrong. But the question gets much harder when it goes from a question of conduct (relating to oneself) to a question of governance (relating to others). Even if it is absolutely morally wrong for me to have sex with my (theoretical) girlfriend, it does not follow that the best thing is for such an act to be illegal in a free society. Moral maxims don’t translate well to governments. “Governments ought to pass laws forbidding men to sleep with women not their wives,” isn’t a self evident universal maxim.

Part of the problem is that governments are not themselves the same kind of moral entity that men are. Another serious problem is the inefficacy of such a proposal. It’s very difficult to compromise about Kantian morality (a thing very important in government). Also it’s nearly impossible to, in political discourse, change another’s worldview upon which these moral laws are founded.

For questions of governance (where moral absolutes are elusive), Utilitarianism makes more sense. How do we maximize the good? Should we pass Law A or not? Principles of justice and equity certainly shouldn’t be violated, but it’s dangerous to put a political discussion in moral terms when there are two good ends. Certainly there are things which governments do which are truly evils (e.g. genocide, taxation without representation); but most governmental decisions aren’t so clear. Entitlement programs have the good ambition to give to the poor, but they also unfairly (in the strictest sense of the word) take from the rich. “Is Kindness more important than Justice?” is not practically answerable. However, “How do we optimize real GDP growth and provision for the poor?” is. We may disagree on the relative importance of the two, but at least we’re having a meaningful discussion. We can compromise on real GDP growth; we can’t compromise on Justice.

But we (particularly in medicine) have drifted back to Kantian, moral language in politics and policy. We say, “Do no harm” as a Kantian and Universal good. We repeat it as a mantra, as if to ward off the spectres of labor in thinking. When asked, “Is it just?” we reply, “Do no harm!”; when questioned, “Isn’t that harming someone?” we just shout “Do no harm!” louder[6]. We assert things like “Nothing but the highest quality,” and “Healthcare is a Right,” and we insist on “Evidence Based Medicine” and trust that (without even evaluating them) they are unquestionable, objective and universal truths. These things do indeed sound great, but we skip right over their cost. [5] [Ironic and Very Tangential Note]

When we say “Nothing but the highest quality” we also mandate “Nothing but the highest cost” and thus violate our second universal law by depriving the poor of healthcare (as a side note, Kant said these things were actually supposed to work together; direct contradictions are a bad sign). We insist on billion-dollar experiments (this is literally the cost of some of the bigger ones) to prove that our medicine works (we call it “evidence based medicine”; we want “highest quality,” after all). But when we get the bill for these (those of us who can afford them, that is) we’re outraged by the abuses of Big Pharma which we, by our demands for “evidence based medicine,” have created. We hop on our “Healthcare is a Right” soapbox and accuse the drug companies of greed (which is probably true) and oppressing the poor (which is probably true), forgetting that it was actually our own greed for perfect drugs which actually deprived the poor of their use.

Instead of trying to guess at universal truths of governance[2], we ought to come up with practical, goals. We cannot all agree that “Healthcare is a human right”; we can agree on “It’s good for everyone to have healthcare.” Instead of asking “How do we guarantee healthcare for all?” we can rally around the question “How do we optimize the distribution of healthcare?”
It is very important to note that the two questions usually have different answers. According to one of my professors, settling for nothing less than “Primary healthcare for all” is leading to “Primary healthcare for none.” Instead of focusing on what could practically be done with available resources (my professor’s goal was to “eradicate Polio,” a goal we are approaching), some people’s zealous attachment to an ideal has actually led to more human suffering. Instead of spending limited money on vaccines to help a million children, they build clinics for a lucky hundreds while thousands die of polio which could have been prevented. And if you really believe that it’s a universal truth that “All people ought to be provided primary healthcare,” you should praise those people. Those people, whose actions ended in the deaths of children by Polio, were Good with a capital ‘G’. They did what was Right. The consequences (dead children) should be irrelevant.

But we don’t really believe that. Kantian ideals and absolutes are wonderful for a podium, but not for real governance. “We ought to fight the Axis of Evil!” as a moral imperative is a lot more motivating than, “It would be in the world’s best interest, including our own and that of the Iraqi people, to war with Saddam Hussein.” And if the Iraq War cost $1,000 and the only casualty was a hangnail, nobody would complain. When it really comes down to it, we’re political utilitarians deep down; we all compare costs and benefits. Internationally, we praise a government that saves children much more than one that nobly tries and fails to provide universal healthcare.

Centuries ago, the wisest of men once assembled to answer this very question: What should a government do? They did not put it in moral terms [3], but practical ones:

…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…[1]

Let us follow their example. So let’s drop the moral language and get to work. The ends we are seeking are common. Rather than fighting over what is the moral thing for a government to do, let us seek to do things like “promote the general Welfare.” Let us agree on a set of things that we can all strive together for: Humanists, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims; Democrats, Republicans, Independents; Atheists, Deists and Theists alike. Let us set out for ourselves what things we would like to accomplish tangibly and find ways to do. Let us together war against suffering; let us not each die defending an ideological hill from the other.

Now if only we in the US had a set of things we agreed to strive for…

[1] Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.

[2] By the way, it’s really hard to come up with Universal Truths without actually thinking about it… guessing usually doesn’t work. Crafters of Universal Truths should at least try to visit the philosophy department every now and again.

[3] These men were certainly extremely Kantian when it came to personal duty. But this did not seem to translate to the Government itself, at least not in the Constitution. In the Declaration they make it clear that, regarding oppressed men, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government” and in the process they were, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” They, as men, believed they had clear and strong moral obligations. In contrast, a government has pragmatic aims. I have not developed this theory fully; it may be worth another post.

[4] How did I end up on this side of the argument?

[5] Ironic and Very Tangential Note: I cannot miss the chance to point out a great irony. These arguments for universal truths on what government ought to do are being made by people who are almost universally self described “Moral Relativists.” The same people who bemoan the close-minded Christians who ‘impose their views’ about sexuality or abortion on others are imposing their own views on healthcare. When I’ve pointed this out to people, they tell me that the great difference between “Everyone a right to life” and “Everyone has a right to healthcare” is that the latter is not based on religion. In other words, the only valid arguments are ones made from the Humanist perspective; the Christian one is invalid for governance (Christianity should only apply to Christians; Humanism should apply to Humanists and Christians). So the difference is that “Everyone has a right to healthcare” is actually True (so should be imposed, though the word ‘imposed’ is always heavily euphemized) and “Everyone has a right to life” is a religiously motivated opinion which should be disregarded. I've even talked to multiple educated people who believe it should be illegal and have said, "Any law motivated by religion should be ruled unconstitutional as a violation of the separation of church and state."

[6] Not-defining ‘harm’ is a hard enough problem to avoid; our brains might explode if we actually had to answer “Why is ‘Do no harm’ the only and overriding thing a doctor ought not do? On what basis ought you 'Do no harm'? And why define your profession on not doing something? Wouldn't it be better to say 'Do heal' instead?”

P.S. I can lie about the post time. But, being a Kantian in my personal ethics, I won't. The time is 1:50am and staying up late is a birthday present to myself.

Philosophy (Part 1 of 3)

I just finished book I of “The Republic” after having a very stimulating conversation on politics over dinner. (Before I go on, and before you go on, read “The Republic.” I know it sounds scary. That’s why I waited. But I was stupid and don’t want you to make the same mistake. It’s a really great book.)

Anyways, the thought I had was on how deep conversation is perceived. I am often asked after I’ve had a particularly good discussion with another person, “So, did you get anywhere?” I’ve always been annoyed by this question, but kept it to myself because I assumed my questioner was right: philosophy doesn’t ‘progress’ in a straight line like most other fields. Often the conclusions of an hour of discussion land the discussants very close to where they started. I was usually embarrassed that we had not made much ‘progress’ towards solving the Problem of Governance in an hour as we would have if we were discussing a crossword puzzle (we might have even finished it).

But I do not think that way anymore. Because, as I have seen them, there are at least three good reasons why studying and discussing philosophy is a good idea. And don’t get tripped up on the word “philosophy” (“phileo” = love; “sophy” = wisdom); I mean discussing hard questions that don’t have easy answers. This covers everything from God’s existence to the wrongness of pirating music. Ultimately, what is the Good that we should pursue and the True that we should believe? These aren’t dry academic discussions about nothing for no end; they’re the essence and motivation of all our decisions. When I say ‘philosophy’ I don’t mean the class you took as a gen-ed requirement.

#1 Philosophy is good exercise
Imagine a race run in a circuit. The gun goes off, and the race begins. The fastest racers stay together, neck and neck, running hard for mile after grueling mile. Two pull ahead of the rest, sweating hard. Finally one of them, in a final exertion, gets ahead and wins the race. And then from the bleachers an onlooker, empty popcorn bag in hand, snipes to the winner, “So, did you get anywhere?” Such a question should be answered by something like, “No, ***hole, I didn’t. I just ran a ****ing race.” [1] This is sometimes how I feel when that question is posed to me after a good discussion. Someone who didn’t do any work presumes that the point of the exertion was to ‘get somewhere,’ and, seeing no ‘progress,’ mocks the waste of time and sweat.

Having a philosophical discussion makes you a stronger person. I got this idea from Francis Bacon who said, “So every defect of the mind, may have a special receipt”[2]. He doesn’t see the mind as a muscle; it’s more like a body. There are multiple muscles that need exercising, and so different exercises for each. There is a part of our mind which reasons philosophically, and by exercising it, it gets stronger. Philosophical discussion about topics so big they won’t get solved are like dumbbells: not directly useful (though valuable, see #3), but weights which when lifted repeatedly, make a person strong for other, more useful endeavors (see #2).

[1] *** = ‘ant’ and **** = ‘frak’ above
[2] Francis Bacon's essay "On Studies": “Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast… So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again … So every defect of the mind, may have a special receipt.” [As a side note, I love being able to remember three words in an essay I read two years ago that was written five centuries ago, typing them into Google, and then being presented with the entire essay in a matter of seconds.]

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3

The Self and Its Brain

We had a lecture today on “Neuroethics,” and the topic of dualism was briefly touched on, but in a manner which was rather disturbing.

Dualism, as described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is, “…the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing.” This is the view that has been traditionally held by the majority of people, and the view that most easily allows one to believe in an immortal soul (so obviously favored by religious folks through the ages). At least it’s a valid theory, right?

Well, not according to what we learned today in lecture.

"The whole universe of your perceptions, your thoughts, your actions, your intentions, your motives your purposes, it's neurons giving off and taking up packets of neurotransmitters, and that's pretty much all there is...The “I” that they experience is really just dopamine and serotonin and other stuff being given off and picked up, and ions going in and ions coming out.... There's certainly no scientific evidence for dualism, for the idea that there's a little homunculus someplace, incorporeal, not physical, that somehow through some magical method connects to your brain, but that it is you and your brain isn't. Your mind, as far as we can tell, is what your brain does."

The strength of the rejection was jarring. I thought it was a legitimate theory. Nope. It’s “some magical method.” But because of the strength of rejection, I was forced to second-guess myself. So I did a bit of research. Who supported it?

I did not expect what I found. Beyond the usual suspects who are way too smart to count for anything (people like Aristotle, Augustine, Plato, Aquinas, Descartes), dualism found support among a very impressive list of scientists and philosophers in the twentieth century. There are strong supporters even in Neuroscience itself.

And I’m not talking about fringe characters. I’m talking about people who laid the foundations of neuroscience. A dualist (Sherrington) won the Nobel Prize for "discoveries regarding the functions of neurons” in 1932. I’d say neurons are pretty important to neuroscience. A decade later, Sherrington wrote a book called “Man on his Nature” expressing dualism. Another dualist named Eccles got the Nobel Prize in 1963 for figuring out how synapses worked and then went on to defend dualism the rest of his life. Later in his life, he worked with a famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper. Popper was hugely influential in our modern understanding of science (he introduced the idea of science having to be ‘falsifiable’). Popper and Eccles published, “The Self and its Brain” in 1977 defending dualism.

It’s hard for me to imagine a better list of advocates for my position: the most important philosopher of science last century, the guy who discovered neurons, and the guy who figured out synapses. Of course there are others. Jeffry Schwartz, a Psychiatrist at UCLA is treating people with OCD according to the philosophy that the mind is not just the brain. Roger Penrose, a giant in mathematical physics, argues for the inadequacy of physics to explain consciousness. Daniel Robinson, a brilliant scholar trained both in philosophy and neuroscience (and who co-authored a book with Eccles), speaks and writes extensively on this topic.

If such brilliant people support it, why is there such opposition? Robinson offers one possible reason, “It would be naive to ignore one fundamental difference between that world [of Sherrington] and the present: the gargantuan monetary stakes and associated perquisites on offer to those who can make and keep the brain sciences big science. There is so much of all this to go round that even philosophers of the right sort stand to gain.” In other words, you can get huge grants to investigate ‘the neurological cause of crime,’ only so long as crime is a brain state. If human responsibility exists beyond the brain, you can’t study it with expensive fMRI machines.

Are all modern philosophers against dualism? According to SEP, the answer is ‘No’: “Amongst mainstream philosophers, discontent with physicalism led to a modest revival of property dualism in the last decade of the twentieth century.” So I am satisfied. If I looked around on my side and saw nobody (as was suggested was the case by our lecturer today), I would be concerned. But indeed the case is reversed. On this philosophical question, I have all on my side but most modern scientists and some philosophers, whose views are severely biased by preexisting commitments to Materialism and money. Even the agnostic founders of neuroscience agree with me. Indeed, as the SEP entry on dualism describes, “although dualism has been out of fashion … the argument is by no means over.”

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/ - Most of my references come from here.

The Core of Christianity

[For Christians...and interested Jews]
I was considering “the Gospel”. I considered the question in isolation. I wanted to find out how the Bible defined the Gospel without ulterior motives or plans to write this. After reading through the a dozen key verses that talk about ‘good news,’ I settled on 3 core truths (with 2 additional sub-points) about the Gospel. After an exhaustive reading of verses that use “Gospel,” I decided that I needed to add two more. And that the 2 sub-points were worthy of promotion to ‘core truth’ status. So I ended up with 7 core truths that seem common to definitions (and passages about) the Gospel (even though I’m prone to trying to make things fit patterns like that, this one was certainly not consciously designed). I found four verses which I believe are the only ‘definitional’ verses on the Gospel (that is, those which say something like, “The Gospel is…”) and based my list of 7 core doctrines on these: 1Ch 16:23-5, Isa 52:7-9, Rom 1:16-17, 1Cr 15:1-9. (See previous entry)

Independently, I’ve been considering what is the core of the message of God? What cannot be taken out of Christianity and it still be Christianity? I was having a very interesting conversation with a friend on Paul’s strategy for planting churches: very sloppy. They didn’t have perfect doctrine by the time he left. He had to work it out from a distance years later. What, then, were the churches he founded based on?

As God usually does, it seems these independent thoughts didn’t stay that way. I had never really thought of the “good news” as being central, which is silly when you think about the core texts being called ‘Gospels’. Perhaps by trying to define “Gospel,” I stumbled across the non-negotiables. Everyone seems to have their own list of things you need to believe/do to be saved. So here’s mine:

1. God is great.
2. Yahweh is Salvation (translates to “Jesus”).
3. We will live by faith.
4. God loves Israel and will be faithful.
5. God loves the Gentiles, too.
6. The scriptures confirm the above.
7. We should declare #1-6

Conspicuously present is ‘Israel;’ conspicuously absent is ‘obedience’ (both of which are good cult litmus tests. “Israel’s not Israel, we’re Israel!” and “Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t enough for salvation!” are two dead giveaways... though this is a high sensitivity and low specificity test). The Christology is not as developed as in most Christian statements of faith, but the cross-scriptural message is the same: Yahweh is Salvation. Whether you lived late enough to know that God meant that literally (that some dude would take on that name and be the very provision by which God would bring about salvation), or like Abraham, you just believed in the fact without knowing the mechanism. I’ve come to the conclusion that “The Gospel,” could have been preached by Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, John (or his remnant disciples in Acts), Jesus (pre-crucifixion) or Paul (post-resurrection). The message has never changed; we just have details added.

Like I said, I didn’t set out to come up with a list need-to-believes. But this looks about right. The core doctrines of Christianity are all here, albeit with some shifts in emphasis (compared to what a seminary student would produce).

Perhaps these represent the core of the faith. Are these elements truly the central ones? In my next entry, I plan to look at sermons by Paul, Peter and Jesus to see if these seven elements are indeed common to their preaching.

Eulogy of Wolf

Wolf is dead. My good friend is dead. His violent and turbulent life ended peacefully this week.

The first part of Wolf’s story is one of darkness and violence. He was a Hell’s Angel and wielded terrible power over those around him. His life was a kaleidoscope of guns, sex, drugs and the occult. He was a violent and selfish man. It was here that Steven Johnson became “Wolf.” His nickname was appropriate, for all his life he would be aggressive and never well-mannered.

His life of violence made him many enemies. One night, he knew that men were coming to kill him. He turned his home into a fortress, and armed himself for a last stand. He feared death. But he would not die that night. That night he would find True Life. He accidentally turned on the TV. The channel was TBN, and the preacher pointed to him and said he needed Jesus to forgive his sins.

Then he saw a light from heaven and he audibly heard the voice of God. He felt a warmth that started in his belly and radiated thorough his body even to the tips of his fingers. His eyes became as fountains, and he wept so that his long beard was soaked with tears. That moment, he walked out of the house, literally leaving his old life and its problems behind him.

He quickly became a powerful man of God. Upon acquiring a King James Bible, he went to a coffee shop and read through it cover to cover in a few days, barely sleeping. And from that moment on, he would live such a life of adventure as to make any hero seem a coward.

He once had a gun bag that he’d fill with many pounds of tracts and Bibles. He would fast for days on end until he had distributed them all. The police once warned him that the particular neighborhood he was in was extremely dangerous for white people; he said he didn’t care and entered anyways. His entrance attracted the local gangs to come and threaten him. But he preached the Gospel to them, and not a few were convicted of their sins and prayed for forgiveness

There were many other stories of exorcisms, poltergeists, and mighty acts of the Spirit. He took jobs in logging, construction, body-guarding and other equally manly vocations.

Later, he led a home for adolescent boys with problems. To hear of his love for those kids was heart-warming. He really cared for those who were so much like him: aggressive, angry and energetic with no positive outlet. He gave them an outlet. He taught them exercise and martial arts. He directed their anger at their own sin and Satan, and their energy to good works.

But one day, he brought a black boy into the church, and this went against the deepest, darkest racist sentiments of the church leaders. It became such an issue (tact was never one of Wolf’s talents), he was fired from his live-in position and so also evicted. He vowed then that, though his belief in Christ was firm, he would never set foot in a church again. After this, he was hit by a Cadillac Escalade, permanently injuring his back and afflicting him with great pain from which he would not have a reprieve for the rest of his life.

He became homeless. His lost job, his injury, and the depression that ensued kept him on the street. The harsh conditions of the street aggravated his difficulty breathing (COPD), the result of a lifetime of smoking. Soon, the street became his home. Abandoned by his church family, and still estranged from his natural family because of his early life, his family became the homeless of his home town: Westwood. Alienated from the rest of the world, his social circle was limited to others who had (or would have) mental problems. He struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts.

Then something incredible happened. He began praying for a church. And then one opened literally across the street from where he slept every night. Shoreline Community Church, after a series of moves, had settled on the Broxton theater. And Shoreline had a heart to reach West LA. All of it. The poor along with the rich. And so people from the church began to befriend Wolf.

He became a part of our family. He went on our family outings (including our men’s retreat and our church picnics). He slept on our couches on particularly cold and rainy nights. We bought him food, and (embarrassingly) he bought us food. He once insisted (and believe me, it’s hard to dissuade him from a thing once he sets his mind on it) on buying food for a barbeque. I’ll never forget what he said that day, with more than a dozen of us gathered to eat steak the homeless man purchased for us with his EBT (food stamps). Someone asked him what he liked with his steak. He replied heartily, “More steak!” He encouraged us and we encouraged him.

Who was Wolf to me? He was one of my good friends the last two years of college. My first conversations with him were simply out of duty. I ought to lower myself to talk with him; I ought to condescend to the poor sinner (He was a sinner, after all; he had a bad mouth; and he drank alcohol). I did not then consider that he may be closer to God than I was.

I am clean person outwardly; a friend (slightly drunk) once addressed me as, “David Carreon! The F***ing Messiah!” And this foul-mouthed, irreverent, racist homeless man taught me, a test-acing, bright-futured, spotless goodie-two-shoes. Truly, I learned many important lessons through God’s servant Wolf.

He inspired me to courage. I may not risk my life as he had, but I certainly could risk my reputation. I may not have the spiritual strength to cast out demons, but I could contend for my faith. Before I knew Wolf, I considered myself among the bravest of spiritual men. He showed me just how far I have to go.

He challenged me to spiritual discipline. This man prayed for me every night from under a pile of cardboard. He read his Bible every day though he was driven from every table he ever limped to. And what did I do? I didn’t even read my Bible 15 minutes on an oaken table in a warm room. And I didn’t pray for him. And he was the one that was needy. Or was he?

He taught me humility. How could I complain about anything when I had a bed? I helped him construct his home of cardboard behind the CitiBank in Westwood a few times. I felt the looks of scorn and the people crossing to avoid coming within ten feet of he and I. I shared in a drop of his tribulation.

He taught me faith. Through the cold of the street, the pain of his back, and an illness which left him often gasping for breath, he struggled with depression. But never would he forget his savior; he never lost the hope of glory. His strength to continue living wavered at times, but his faith never did. He was assured of his salvation, and now stands before the One in whom he trusted.

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” I always thought Jesus was talking about me, a spiritually humble person. I thought, “Mine is the Kingdom of Heaven.” But I think this better applies to Wolf than to me. He was poor. He was blessed. And now, his is the Kingdom of Heaven.

On Evangelism and Coercion

I spoke with a Christian classmate and they said that their stomach turns when they hear the word “Evangelical”. I asked them why, and they explained that feelings of coercion and pride were at the root of the feeling. I suppose that the person felt like “evangelism” was tantamount (at least connotatively) to the Inquisition: Believe or die!

This is a common perception on my sociological category. And perhaps my ancestors were indeed inquisitors and I have to deal with that true legacy. Or it’s propaganda. In either case, I’ve got a strike (or three) against me in starting any conversation because I’m an “Evangelical”. So every once in a while, I am compelled to give a defense for the word with which I am stereotyped.

Evangelism is for me simply the attempt to convince another to believe in a theory about God and the universe. This theory has brought me great joy and peace, and because I love my neighbor, I wish to share the joy and peace.

My motivation hinges on changing belief. But the interesting thing about belief is that it’s not voluntarily changeable. No matter how much money I offered to pay you, you could not believe that the tooth fairy is sitting on top of your monitor right now. Even if you stood to make $1 million, you could not actually believe in something that you believed to be false. And no matter what I threatened you with, you couldn’t change your beliefs. You could say you believe something, but clearly you can’t change your own mind this way. Coercive “belief”, isn’t belief.

The next point is one of Christian doctrine. Christians believe that salvation comes through belief (at least…). So if no one can ‘coerce’ anyone else into believing a thing and if my religion teaches that belief is required for salvation, what then is evangelism? Whatever it is, it logically cannot be coercive. What is it then?

If you want to change someone else’s mind (say, on the team that will win on Sunday), you need to use evidence. Everything from a qualitative statement like “The Cardinals have such a great offense,” to a quantitative one: “Kurt Warner threw 4583 yards in the 2008 season.” This is the way you can change a mind: present compelling evidence. The mind’s evaluates evidence: “For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat” (Job 34:3). So give it evidence!

Do I have the truth? I think I do, as I hope everyone thinks they do. Or at least a part of it.

Isn’t it arrogant to claim that your way is the only way? It would be if I claimed that the human institution of Christianity was the only way, it would indeed be arrogant; we are humans who built it, after all. This is the incredible thing about Christianity: we don’t have a monopoly on the truth. You don’t have to go to a Christian church to be saved. You don’t have to call Jesus “Jesus.” You just have to believe in the truth. Those Christians who do this will be saved; those who don’t, won’t. Jesus actually says that many will profess to be his followers but in the end “…I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” The same goes for every human on the planet: if you have right belief, you will be saved.

It’s not about Christianity; it’s about the truth. Just like nature, gravity doesn’t care if you’re calculating where a cannonball lands from Newton’s laws or from lots of practice. Gravity is gravity, and its rewards are not exclusive to Newtonians. We can say that Newton has perhaps the most effective and elegant way to analyze gravity on a macro scale, but a man need not know the name of Newton to use gravity effectively. The same is true for Christianity. It’s the most effective and elegant way to analyze the spiritual world, but a man need not know the name of Jesus to attain salvation.

So I am an Evangelist for Christianity as Newton was an Evangelist for physics. Did Newton coerce people into believing his theories? No. He convinced them. One piece of evidence at a time. Because his view was true, people who believed in it were better off because of their belief. And belief in Newtonian physics spread.

We consider it an obligation and an honor for a scientist to make his findings known. We look at respect on the evangelical scientist, he who tries to better the world by his revelation of truth. And this is what I aim to do: to share what I believe I understand. If my reasons and evidence are compelling, believe. If not, don’t. I am an Evangelical Christian as Newton was an Evangelical Scientist.

Living and Life

We confusing living for life. We attempt to keep on living for its own sake, and do not realize that in so doing, we fail to truly live.

It is prudent to preserve one's life, but not for it's own sake. I wear a helmet to prevent death by unworthy causes. It is not to maximize the number of years my heart beats. I have protected my life for 23 years so that I might have a chance to spend it on something worthwhile.

We should not flee from death. We err gravely When we equate senseless death with sacrificial death. If we look at soldiers who die and those who die in car crashes and say about both, "what a waste of life," we nullify the nobility of sacrificial death. The soldier gave his life for others; his death was meaningful (even if the war isn't). The car crash victim made no such sacrifice; his death was meaningless. We may justly oppose war because of justice or cost; we ought not oppose it simply because of death.

We can never make 'less death' the end of society. Living alone is not a virtue. Courage, honor and love are; we ought never to sacrifice these for the sake of living. In our decisions we must consider the bad and good that we are preventing.

There are certainly some policy decisions which are straightforward. No major virtue is lost by mandating seat belts. But we cannot take the argument developed in a realm without virtue and apply it to one with virtue.

There is often strong opposition to an organizations' members going to dangerous places. There is a fear that their 'lives will be lost'. On the contrary. Their lives will be saved. If they die for a noble cause, they will have experienced some life within their living. If they avoid all danger and risk, they may never see life, though they live.

Life is loving our neighbor, and true life sometimes requires that a person not live as long. Life is not a beating heart. It is a thriving soul. Making life all about prolonging the functioning of a pump is foolish.

Let us never exchange life for living.

Mar 8:35 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it."

If American Healthcare was a Burger Joint

Imagine you work up a mighty appetite. You consider to yourself, “Self, I have a mighty appetite. What shall I do?” Upon reflection, you come up with two revelations as if from on high, “McDonalds or In-N-Out.” You certainly like McDonalds’ fries, but the fresh ingredients at In-N-Out are very tasty too (and somewhat healthy, to boot). You weigh your options, but the double-double animal style wins out.

You walk in to the white-and-red themed eating establishment. You wait in the line (it’s 12:34pm, and it seems that everyone else had the same idea). You get to the counter. At the last minute you have a quick change of mind and with exuberance exclaim to the cashier, “I’ll have a three-by-three animal style!”

Then what’s next? Payment for your tasty burger, of course! You pull out your wallet, expecting to hear the price of what will be a much needed relief of your hunger.

“I’m sorry, we don’t take cash,” says the cheerful cashier whose nametag reads ‘Allison’. “We only accept food insurance. Also government Food-i-care.”

“Food insurance? That sounds awfully silly. Why would you need insurance for an everyday transaction between the burger-flipping establishment and yourself? It sounds especially silly since the cause of your being here is not exactly unexpected (you do get hungry about three times a day, every day). Why should you be forced to buy food insurance?” reasons your ever-alert mind. “I should be able to reason through this with a manager.”

“May I speak to the manager?” you ask Allison, with the utmost politeness.

“Certainly,” says now somewhat less cheery Allison, looking somewhat dejected that her services were not good enough for your rational inquiries.

A sharp looking manager wearing the white-and-red (and a nametag that says “Rob,” you wonder if his real name is Robert or if his legal name actually is what his nametag reads) comes out and greets you. “How can I help you, sir?” he asks.

“I’d like to pay for my cheeseburger,” you say in as straightforward a tone as you can muster in the face of all the shenanigans thus far.

“With money?!” asks Rob in disbelief. He begins howling with laugher.

“Yes, with money,” you say, the annoyance in your voice communicating to Rob that this, though apparently very funny, was not intended as a joke.

“You can’t do that! Who pays for goods and services with money?” exclaims the bewildered Rob, throwing his hands into the air.

“I do,” you say, crossing your arms.

Rob, looking very confused at never having encountered such an obstinate customer replies, “Well, you can’t. We’d love your business, but you see, we don’t have prices here.”

“You don’t have prices?” you ask.

“That’s right. We don’t have prices,” said Rob with a neener-neener tone in his voice.

“Well,” you retort, assured that the shenanigans surely could not have reached this far, surely. “Surely you could just tell me the price of my three-by-three and I could pay for it. You know the price of scrumptious burger meat, delectable cheese and sponge-dough buns; you know how much the rent and utilities cost for this spunky building; you know how much it costs to hire cheerful people to staff an In-N-Out; and you know how much profit you can make while staying competitive. Tell me how much one burger’s worth of that cost would be.”

“We actually don’t really know,” says Rob, in a matter-of-fact voice.

“You don’t know,” you say in disbelief.

“That’s right. We don’t know,” Rob explains flatly. “I’m sure somebody knew at some point. Maybe somebody has made some estimation. Maybe. All I know is that we don’t know. And that’s for sure. It’s not that we don’t take cash per say, it’s that we just wouldn’t know how to charge you.”

“But how do you normally get paid?” you ask in bewilderment.

Rob begins to explain the normal process, “We’ve negotiated contracts with food insurance companies. We wring ‘em for every cent that they’re worth. Sometimes we get a good deal. Sometimes we don’t. See that customer right there in the purple cardigan? His health insurance company is paying us $12 for his double double. But see that one over there in the pink t-shirt? She’s on food-i-care and that’s a bad deal for us. We’re only getting $3 for the same thing. We’re able to extort enough money out of the cardigan guy’s company to make up for it, though. So it works out. The problem for you is that we don’t actually know how much it costs.”

“Surely somebody does,” you say, as if trying to get an admission out of Rob.

“Nope,” says Rob with confidence. “Well somebody claims to, but nobody does. Every one of our deals is secret, and nobody wants to know how much we extort for our burgers, and no food insurance company wants the others to know how much they pay us. Otherwise the ones that we’re screwing would be upset. So since all these deals are secret, nobody knows.”

“Who claims to know?” you ask.

Rob’s eyebrows furrow; a black look comes across his face. “Food-i-care. They have interviewed hundreds of burger flippers, rated burger-flipping for how stressful a job it is, and how desirable it is to be employed in that manner. They’ve calculated the number of minutes to flip a burger. Then they calculate the national average cost for beef and cheese. And they figure out it should only cost $3 to make a burger. So that’s what they pay.”

You, being a big fan of the fresh ingredients and cheerful service at In-N-Out, and having seen the differences in price for fresh ingredients at the grocery store, ask, “Do they account for the fact that In-N-Out uses scrumptious burger meat, delectable cheese and sponge-dough buns? Surely this would make In-N-Out burgers more expensive than McDonalds.”

Rob shakes his head, “They do not account for such things. You’re probably right that our burgers actual cost is more than McDonalds’, but they don’t care. They’ve ruled that a burger is worth $3, so that is how much we get.”

“How do people decide where to eat?”

“Some of them are told where they can eat by their food insurance companies. Others just go to the most expensive burger joints they can find, since the food insurance is picking up the tab. Mr. Cardigan over there is usually at Le Burger Espensiv across the street every day; he comes here for a bit of variety.

“It sounds like there is no mechanism left for controlling rising burger costs,” you notice.

“You are right. Burger costs have been rocketing upwards and no matter how we adjust the wings, the rocket doesn’t slow down!” says Rob.

You get upset and say, “Shucks! I certainly wish there were some mechanism for controlling costs, improving quality and inspiring innovation in the fast food industry.” Your mind races. You once took an introduction course in economics. You remember that one of the turning points in the history of the world was the inventions of just such a mechanism. You remember that other ways of distributing goods and services had been tried and had failed throughout the centuries. But what was this miraculous system that, as an enchanted sword, slashed rising prices?

“The free market!” you exclaim, joy rushing in where there had only been despair.

Rob waxes poetic and crushes your optimism, “Alas, the food free market is dead! If only we had the wisdom and courage to bring it back!”

The Next Step

We have heard of the epic struggle of life, up from a single organism that struggled to survive. We have heard of the grand battle of this organism and its children to overcome the odds and live and reproduce and change. This great odyssey through the eons has become the narrative of our age, the modern story of our creation.

I often wonder about the story. What would it have been like? There were many great changes throughout the ages. Birds, for example, were one of these great changes from one category of creature to another. Did each of these first pioneers know the implications for the countless creatures that would follow? How long did the capacity to fly exist before the first proto-bird took to the sky? How many of those who could fly did?

It must have been a critical moment in the history of any species at such a point in evolution. Any creature who did not take the leap would die, out-competed and outlived by his courageous fellows who freed themselves from the shackles of gravity. His proud ancestral line of survivors, unbroken from the dawn of life to that day, was finally shattered by the great and cruel rod of selection. Perhaps his memory was not lost in the darkness of history; perhaps our knowledge of this race of creatures was informed by his inability to fly from a flood. If this is the case, we can thank him for teaching us of his failed strategy: stagnancy.

I have pondered what it would be to observe this phenomenon, and sometimes disappointed not to see it dramatically playing out in the animal kingdom. I have often wanted to see such a transition. I would have loved to see the first ambitious step onto dry land, or the first bold avian leap from a branch. It seems that we have reached something of an equilibrium, or at least it feels that way to a creature with a lifespan under a century.

But I’m not so sure that we're at equilibrium. I have a feeling that something is afoot; or rather something has been afoot. Unique amongst our fellow creatures, we are the first to begin to change our environment, rather than be changed by it. We have reached a critical point in intelligence where we have categorically become a different kind of creature: a reasoning one. One cannot study the natural history of art, religion, or morality. These all arise with humans, as if our step in intelligence was the one that crossed some sort of threshold, making us the first creature to enter the palace of reason. Like the early birds, have we finally developed some new capacity?

The twists and turns of evolution are so dramatic. Like the characters of a play, the bacteria, the plants, the fish, the land-creatures all take their places on the stage. In one scene late in the play, we can see the rise of the reptiles in an escalating battle for survival. The claws grow longer, the teeth sharper. Armor builds up on the backs of the great lizards like plating on battleships. Then, when one would predict the plot of ever thickening armor, the king to succeed the great Tyrannosaurus turns out to be the meek mammal. These small and unassuming creatures out-survive their reptilian masters, and then begin an arms-race of their own. Bigger and bigger brained creatures struggle for dominance. Then, humans enter, stage left, and we find ourselves on the stage of natural history. We are the biggest-brained of the big-brained creatures. So what’s next? Will our brains get bigger as reptilian armor got thicker? Or should we expect something unexpected?

It seems that we have already entered into the realm of reason; more brain power is not a dramatic change. And besides, our brains have produced machines which have more computing power than we could evolve in a millennium of millenniums. If we look to history, we should expect the change to be something dramatic, something new. How do we seek something new? And what hints can we look for?

If we were early birds, we could have contrasted ourselves to other creatures. We could have noticed that we were lighter than other creatures. We might have tried jumping and seeing that we could jump higher than other creatures. Then by progressive jumps, we would have learned to fly. So what is unique about humans? How could we jump?

We see the beginnings of our jumping. Though now we are not simply escaping the law of gravity, but the realm of matter. We have seen even the earliest of humans jumping to escape the rigid laws of death and decay through ceremonial burial. We see philosophers suggest the existence of forms and ideas, believing they transcend the material world. We try to read mathematicians who propose immaterial mathematical laws which they believe are foundational to the physical. We read authors and poets who write of places never seen and ideals never known. And we hear prophets who bear witness of a reality which is more real than any material thing. If these poets and prophets are not all mad, then truly we are at a critical point in the history of the cosmos: we have reached a point when we are no longer confined to the cosmos.

These men were those who jumped and glided. None of them ever said he could break out of the physical. But then there came one of us who claimed he could fly; he claimed that in himself, the visible and the invisible met. Moreover, he came with the message that we all could fly, and he showed us how. In so doing, he made sense out of our humanity. As the inexplicable and inconvenient feathers of the early birds finally made sense in flight, so too did this man make sense of humanity’s otherwise incomprehensible yearnings and graspings for invisible things.

Anyone who looked at his life would have believed that he made sense of humanity; he was the ideal human being. Every virtue to which we all aspire was fulfilled in him. The strange conflict between “ought” and “is” was resolved in his life. He was courageous and strong in fighting proud oppressors; he was kind in healing those who were hurting. His life provoked many to jealousy; but even they could say nothing against him. He was humble and did not glorify himself, but was in truth, born a king. He was deft at debate, and passionate in prayer. He loved others to the point of death. And then, to prove that he was no longer bound by death, he resurrected from the dead.

The first bird to spread its wings and fly was the greatest among the birds; it expressed the full essence of the species through flight. But soon, all birds became what they were destined to be: flying creatures. And now we can follow that first man who constructed a bridge between the visible with the invisible we all yearn for.

As eyeless creatures gained the ability to detect physical light, he suggested that the next step for our race is to use our new eyes and detect spiritual light (“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” ). As the first men rose above animal instinct, he teaches that we now must rise above human instinct to divine nature (“He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature” ). As animals developed teeth for eating newer and more nutritious foods, so he calls us to eat a new kind of food altogether (“I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” ). As the first organism transitioned from non-life to biological life, he promises us that by following him we could transition from biological life to spiritual life (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” ). As humans developed socially complex society, repenting of our tribalism, he urges the New Men to rise above complex societies to a heavenly kingdom (“Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” ). This man is calling us to evolve to something more than human. Or rather, he is calling us to express the fullness of our humanity.

Will you not follow this man to the sky? Will you ignore the glimpses your young spiritual eyes have seen when the light is brightest, in the power of the thunderstorm, the grandeur of the mountaintop, or in the passion of a kiss? Will you watch as your fellow creatures reap the rewards of this new kind of existence while you debate within yourself whether wings can work? Will you remain a flightless bird?

Take flight! Take the leap into the air and fly! Or if you’re more hesitant, jump a little first and see how high you get. But for heaven’s sake, at least try! Try to open your spiritual eyes and see what of heaven is visible, or open your mouth to taste spiritual food. See what comforts and joys are to be experienced in this new Kingdom. One of those New Men who had new eyes saw this image of our race: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Let us take the next step. Let us fly into eternity after Jesus Christ!

The Song of Twilight

Earlier today, I prayed with one of my friends on campus and I biked back towards home after finishing. I cycled towards home down Serra Street past the main quad just after sunset. Some light lingered still, as if in homage to the set sun. For no particular reason (and against the very nature of late-October), my mind began to sing “Joy to the World!” As I reflected on the line, “Let Heaven and Nature sing,” I began to consider the connection between the beauty of Nature and the beauty of Heaven, and especially of Heaven’s plan of salvation through Christ.

I looked up at the trees, and it was as if they began to sing. And my eyes heard their Song. The Song of Twilight commenced by the shadows, shapes and colors of a million leaves. I smiled wide, passing trees on both sides. My teeth exposed, I felt the rhythm of the cool air. The trees sang their praises to God, and my smile would have grown if it were possible. My joy, ever filling, spilled over into my eyes which upturned, but even they would not be able to contain it. Then the Song moved to its crescendo! I heard as heaven above me joined the choir, singing in a deep blue baritone, and about me the buildings sang in earthen colors and the red of tile roofs. All of them together sang in a language unknown but familiar. Though I knew not the words, I knew their message and the Joy in their voices. Nature was unanimous and emphatic in its song: “God loves you.” And my Joy was full.

I continued pedaling down the road, and Joy from the Song continued filling me. Finally Joy overflowed my soul and streamed down my face in tears. They came first in a trickle and then as a flood. The Song was muffled by the tears, but still loud. As my eyes kept hearing of the Love of God, I continued to weep.

It must have been quite a sight for those who saw me: a full-grown man riding his bicycle, his face wet and dripping with tears, his eyes red with crying, and strangest of all, wearing a grin ear-to-ear and laughing.

I cycled for a quarter mile, barely able to see. And then at last, the Song faded. The choir members went back to merely being glorious sky and beautiful trees. But the memory of their melody still played in my soul.

I used to think of our souls as a sliding scale, and “full joy” was moving towards one side of that scale. I used to think Jesus’ promise to make full the joy of those who abided in Him was simply a movement of the scale a point or two. Today I learned that Jesus meant ‘full,’ and not ‘maximal,’ for ‘full’ implies a liquid. So then ‘full joy’ could not be measured by a scale; rather our souls catch Joy as it falls like rain from heaven. But we are imperfect and our souls, like cracked pottery, are always leaking and never full. But today, for no special reason beyond God’s delight, I was filled with Joy to overflowing by the Song of Twilight.

Why you can’t believe in Dandelions (Part I)

I have recently realized something about most people: they are inconsistent. Orwell described this state of mind in his novel 1984: “…holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” This is what most people in America do today, and like those in 1984, they do not know that they are doing it.

In most cases, people will plagiarize the pleasant parts of another philosophy (in the case of America, from Christianity), nor realizing that the stolen material is actually contradictory to the argument. This pair of articles intends to show several of the more important areas where this occurs like, Please, Soup Kitchens, Science, True Love, and of course, Dandelions. In the next article, I will show that these are possessions of Christians which have been stolen by Humanists. In this one, I will describe the dangers of such thieving to the Humanist, and thus my motivation for writing this. As this is a public safety announcement for Humanists, I will address the rest of this article to you, my Humanist friends.

You believe in a lot of Christian beliefs in things like “Please,” soup kitchens and Dandelions against all Humanist evidence (to your credit). You know true things to be true no matter how inconsistent it may be with your worldview. One issue (which will be dealt with in the next article) is, “Which things in Humanism are borrowed or inconsistent?” The other issue (and the one I will deal with here) is: “So what if Humanism does borrow some things? Who cares if I pick and choose what things I believe in? I may prefer the idea of caring for others above the idea of Survival of the Fittest in society, but that’s not inconsistent.”

In this article I will try to describe why that’s a bad, or at very least, a dangerous idea.

The first problem is that borrowing ideas without citing them is stealing. In most of these cases, you are taking what was a Christian virtue, renaming it, and then calling it your own (or that of your philosophy). “‘Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them,’ (Matthew 7:12)” becomes, “I should do to others what I’d want them to do to me.” You don’t cite sources, because you usually don’t know that it’s plagiarized. While it helps, not knowing does not excuse you. You have received stolen merchandise; your ignorance about its origins doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got somebody else’s stuff. Nevertheless, the plagiarism in itself is not so much a logical problem as a moral one.

What is a logical problem is the fact that you are using far too many Christian ideas. To help illustrate this, imagine we are both building structures. Imagine I am setting bricks onto a stone foundation according to a blueprint. Now imagine you are watching me. You like the way one of the walls of my building is coming along, so you take some of my bricks (with or without permission) and start to make one that looks like it yourself.

In the parable, the bricks are Christian philosophies (the Golden Rule, for example). The foundation is my faith in Jesus and the blueprint is Christianity as a worldview (including all that is in the Bible and all the philosophical implications and answers that come from it).

The problem you have in the parable is this: in every location where a Christian brick is used instead of a secular one, it weakens your position in two ways. Your first problem is that you’re using my bricks. Why do you need my bricks? Are yours not good enough? Are mine better? Secondly, every time you look to me, a Christian builder, to watch what bricks I lay, it begs the question: “Why not copy the foundation, too?” If I were indeed a better builder (the evidence for this is accumulates with every one of my bricks you lay), it would be a very good idea to look to my foundation, which (as a Civil Engineer let me assure you) is the most important part of a building. It may be that the bricks form an excellent building, but that building was not designed to stand on anything but the solid foundation of Christ; in fact, when engineers specify strong foundations, it usually means that they are required for the building to stand.

What is also a very bad idea is to engineer by mosaic. Two heads may be better than one, but building according to two different blueprints is definitely not. You may think yourself bright, but there have been many before you who were brighter. And what’s more, these people have worked together over the centuries to come up with ideas which were comprehensive. They have thought of everything within a particular view and how it fits in with everything else. And so we have various worldview ‘blueprints,’ called Christianity and Atheism which are comprehensive. That is, they have answers (good or bad; attractive or repulsive; and I won’t say “respectively,” at least not yet) to all important questions.

When you take a girder from a Christian blueprint because you like the way it looks, and try to fit that into an Atheist building, there is no guarantee that it will not cause a structural failure. Unless you believe yourself more capable than the original architects, swapping pieces from separate blueprints is a very dangerous thing to do. It might be safe to change the façade on a Christian building to look more Mexican, but do not change a pillar of Atheism (selfishness) with one of Christianity (selflessness) and think the structure sound.

But what if you did? What if you fling all caution to the wind and throw up a structure which had all the attractive elements (stolen from the Christian worksite) put together on the loose and sandy foundation of Atheism. Imagining that you could get an engineer to sign off on it, and assuming it was a possible construction (that is, assuming you took the spires with their flying buttresses), you’d end up with a building.

Some might call it a monstrosity, an amalgam of two contradictory styles, Gothic spires above Greek columns, or a Renaissance façade on a steel building. But you could claim that it was your monstrosity, and that you liked the way it looked. They might claim that you had no single theme in mind when you designed it. But you could say that a building doesn’t need a single theme. Some would call you a fool for sleeping in a structure which would be shaken if rain fell or earth shook. You could say that you don’t care about the danger, and could assert with no evidence that your building would stand, come what challenges may. You would contend that, even though a structure like yours has never seen an earthquake or hurricane, it would be strong because it looked good and was built with good materials.

And maybe you’d prove them all wrong: all the architects throughout history who followed rules, all those who said you shouldn’t steal building materials, all the artists who said two styles couldn’t be mixed, all the engineers who said you should have built on rock and not sand, and all the meteorologists who predicted it would be destroyed in a storm. Maybe. But what are the chances? How likely is it that you’ve stumbled onto something that one of the real architects missed? Do you really want to live in a building that has no precedent? Certainly, if you are one of the visionaries of our age who is blazing a trail through unexplored country. But is that how you see yourself? Do you really feel safe in a structure designed by you, who are neither architect nor engineer? Do you feel comfortable in a building which those who are experts say is unsound?

In other words, do you trust your philosophy to stand up to all challenges of life? Do you have confidence that your untested and untried belief will be steadfast against seeing gross injustice, experiencing great evil, and will remain unshaken even in the face of your own death?

If the answer to these questions is, “Yes!” then I have nothing more to say. You are either a genius or insane (or both), and I hope that your structure does not collapse so suddenly as you cannot escape.

But for those of you uncomfortable with the prospect of mosaic architecture, stay tuned. I will soon attempt to show you which bricks you have stolen from Jesus, and explain how they work much better when laid upon a solid foundation.