Miracles – Can We Believe Them?

Lucas Mix – GTU alum, university chaplain, and astrobiologist – has a new post over at his weblog that is worth a read if you have ever wondered about miracles. I’ll just give a quote and let you read the rest:

For good and ill, the clockwork metaphor of Newton and Descartes is no longer familiar, so start with something you know:  video games.

Let us say that God is video game developer.  She codes for a massive multiplayer environment that we will call the World…

With that beginning, we can talk about the modes of interaction our developer has with the program.

A)     She wrote the program: Creation.  Pretty straightforward.

B)      She maintains the program, not only by keeping the server running, but by patching, allocating memory, and making upgrades.  Christians call this “sustaining” or continual creation.

C)      She might act as a player, taking on an avatar and playing by the rules everyone else plays by… Indeed, this is quite close to what most Christians believe of Jesus Christ…

I’m sympathetic towards this metaphor too, as are a whole bunch of atheists who call it “the simulation hypothesis” (which I’ve talked about here), and yet still call themselves atheist (can’t quite figure that one out). Read the rest at Lucas’s Weblog.

As for me, on the question of divine action, ever since I’ve been a Christian I’ve figured that accepting the creation of the world is a pretty big miracle right there. Everything else is minor by comparison. So, like Lucas, when it comes to miracles, I say “no big deal” for God, just a “big deal” for us.

Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Taken Alive: A Moral Victory

Good job to the Boston Police Department!

Taking Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alive is a very good thing. I don’t know if he was wearing a suicide bomb, but given his and his brother’s blatant disregard for human life (and reports that his brother was wearing one) I wouldn’t be surprised. And in that case the BPD did a huge job – they not only saved the lives of any other innocent victims Tsarnaev might have killed, they saved his life too.

The best possible outcome is still, then, possible – Tsarnaev might say he is sorry. It might not happen, but if it does we should rejoice because that would deflate the terrorist cause; he would be acknowledging that he and his cause were wrong. And that is a powerful witness to keep others away from it. And it would help restore Tsarnaev’s own humanity – he needs to have his sense of right and wrong corrected. It will also show that moral behavior on our part pays off.

When Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan it was only a half-victory for the USA, as I noted at the time. We not only acted outside the law, but we denied him the ability to apologize. That would have been the ultimate victory – the apology of our foremost enemy – and we lost it by killing him. We denied ourselves the opportunity for a moral victory. And as we continue our “War on Terror” we continue to deny ourselves the opportunity for this highest victory.

No matter how unlikely the apology is, we still need to give our enemy that chance. It is not only better for them, it is better for us. Even though distorted towards vice, they are human too. Because in a deep way treating one’s enemy as a human denies the dichotomy of “us” and “them.” It makes us all “us.”

If we deny the humanity of our enemy, we reinforce their denial of ours.  The only way to end this war is by mutual respect or total annihilation, and as I said before, we aren’t going to choose the second path. So we better get started on the path to the first.

In this act of good law enforcement, the BPD respected the humanity of someone who attacked us as an enemy. We need more of this behavior towards those who call themselves our enemies. So once again, good job Boston PD. When BPD officers (and I hesitate to bring it up, but it is the truth and we should never shy away from it) brutalized the peaceful Occupy Boston protesters that was a low-point, but today you have show us the better way.

Let this be a formative moment for our nation, to direct us to defend justice with compassion and respect even for those who deny it to us. We need the moral high ground, not only for the sake of our enemies, not only for the sake of those watching, but for our sake, for us, to keep us human.

And on that note I will end with a link to a story from World War Two. It is a must-read, about a German pilot sparing an American B-17, but I’ll just excerpt one quote.

“People think of the rules of war primarily as a way to protect innocent civilians from being victims of atrocities,” she says. “In a much more profound sense, the rules are there to protect the people doing the actual fighting.”

The code is designed to prevent soldiers from becoming monsters.”

Today we did not become monsters. That might sound like a hollow hurrah, but it is not just a negative, it is much more than that.

Instead we became humans.

China’s Blind and Barefoot Hero: Chen Guangcheng

Chen Guangcheng, from Wikipedia.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the awards ceremony for the 2013 Katharine and George Alexander Law Prize at Santa Clara University. The recipient was the Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, a blind and (formerly) barefoot peasant from rural China turned international human rights advocate.

Chen escaped China with his wife and two children in 2012, after he fled house arrest (thanks to some very incompetent guards – remember Chen is blind and fled alone!) and appeared at the US embassy in Beijing. After causing quite an international incident, Chen has now settled down into life in New York City, where he studies law at New York University.

I want to share a few of the things Chen said as well as a few of my impressions.

First, Chen was extremely blunt in his criticism of China’s leaders. He said that he was reluctant to call them a “government” because they ignore the rule of law. He referred to them as the Chinese Communist Party, not a government.

When questioned about the likelihood of future dissent he said this: “In the past the government was pulling up small plants. But now they are becoming trees.” Chen continued by saying that he actually found the possibility of a future revolution “likely,” which I  found quite surprising, and which his translator did not initially translate – the moderator added that he said that.

Chen also commented, when asked what factors shaped who he is as a person, that his response has been very much a “natural reaction,” like shying away when you are being beaten. But in this case, of course, he did not shy away, he turned towards the beating and became hugely important because of it.

Chen voiced his appreciation of US law and the role of lawyers in human rights work to improve America over its history. It made me proud of my country that we could give refuge to such a courageous seeker of justice. It was also bittersweet to remember that the United States does have a very checkered human rights history, but that through the rule of law we have done much to overcome some of the worst abuses of the past.

Interestingly, while Chen’s story took center stage, what was not spoken of in much detail were some of the grotesque injustices that Chen had actually been fighting against.

“I Will Wait For You”: The Meaning and Morality of Waiting

A few months ago an interesting synchronicity occurred which caught my attention. Two pieces of popular culture both mentioned the idea of waiting, in highly idealized terms.  The first (that I noticed) was Mumford and Sons song “I Will Wait for You.”

The second was the trailer for the movie “Cloud Atlas.” At minute 5:10 Frobisher speaks (via letter) to Sixsmith, saying that he believes there is a better place after death, and that he will be there waiting for him.

(Yes, I know I said I was going to review the movie “Cloud Atlas” and I never did. But the trailer was better than the movie and I couldn’t bring myself to say all that needed to be said about the movie; so the trailer and the book review will have to do.)

What is so interesting about waiting that two pieces of popular culture would both mention it in such lyrical terms? What deeper truth is being pursued when both mention the idea of waiting?

The quick answer (do wait for the longer one) is that we live in a society that hates to wait. We rush, rush, rush and never encourage restraint from immediate gratification and indulgence. Advertising is all about getting you to act NOW, before your judgment and virtue can act to keep you on track. We want it all now, now, now. Anything worth waiting for is lost. This habituates us towards vice, and it is ubiquitous – everywhere, all the time.

The messages of waiting provided by Mumford and Sons and “Cloud Atlas” are therefore very counter-cultural, and stand out all the more because of it. But there are even deeper ideas at play here too. And this leads to the longer answer.

The Ethics of Meteor and Asteroid Defense

The meteor which caused extensive damage and numerous injuries in Chelyabinsk, Russia, yesterday is an unpleasant wake up call for those of us here on Earth. We live in a cosmic shooting gallery. Not only did a 150 foot wide chunk of rock (named 2012 DA14) whiz by us and miss, but a smaller rock – estimated to be 50 feet wide – hit the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, causing extensive damage. And in the evening (Pacific Standard Time), another meteor was spotted over the San Francisco Bay Area, but thankfully caused no damage.

The Chelyabinsk meteor and 2012 DA14 were on completely different trajectories and were therefore unrelated events.  Quite possibly the third meteor sighting was unrelated to either of the others as well. We just live in the midst of a lot of falling rocks (i.e. the solar system) and sometimes we get hit.  Not very often, thankfully, but enough to warrant concern. If 2012 DA14 had hit the Earth’s atmosphere, for example, the estimated explosion would have been in the megaton range, enough to destroy a large city.

Now, for all of the previous history of the Earth, there has not been anything to be done about threatening space rocks. They were simply a fact of life, and for most of human history they were not even understood. But now we understand them, and we also have the technological capacity – should we choose to develop it – to find and stop many of these threats.

In other words our inability to stop these kinds of dangers are now our choice.

We need to take responsibility for this choice to do nothing. If we do not find the threats and develop ways to deal with them we are now negligent. We are negligent because we know the danger and yet proceed anyway, without doing anything to lessen the danger.

I’ve said this before: morality and technology are highly related. They are highly related because technology increases power, and increased power means increased moral responsibility.  The more evil you can do, the more your moral responsibility to not do that evil.  The more good you can do, the more good you are responsible to do. Our choice to not even fully know about the potential threats, much less prepare for them, is a choice to allow evil to happen, and for that we are responsible.

But now I have a prediction. As of yesterday, Russia is going to get serious about meteor and asteroid defense. Two hits in 105 years (the other being the Tunguska Blast) and Chelyabinsk being a center of nuclear research add some context. And that means Russia is going to start probing seriously powerful technologies which have dual use as seriously dangerous weapons. And (though the Cold War is over) that is going to make the United States take notice, and perhaps respond with its own research.  And that will  result in further countries (Europe, China) and then the UN taking notice.

We can consider the geopolitical situation to have been dealt an interesting card by Mother Nature. Hopefully this card, as a warning, will result in an orderly and unified human response towards these types of extraterrestrial threats. Ideally, some type of multinational research coalition can be formed to not only find more of these threats but to also figure out ways to stop them, and then, hopefully and with great caution, develop the actual means to neutralize these threats.

This will involve exceedingly dangerous research, because any technology capable of diverting an asteroid away from the Earth will also be able to divert one towards it. But, like geoengineering, this may be a technology that, for better or for worse, we are simply forced into. At this point in history, to not pursue asteroid defense is irrational because it takes a risk that simply ought not be taken: the risk that at any time, anywhere on Earth, millions – or worse -  could die from a potentially preventable disaster.

Should Pope Benedict XVI Have Stepped Down?

Today Pope Benedict XVI gave his two-weeks notice. He’s retiring to a life of prayer after 8 years in office.  This is the first time a Pope has resigned since Gregory XII in 1415. But is it the right thing for him to have done?

I have just a few thoughts to add to the whirlwind of news surrounding the  matter.

1) This is a truly humble and unusual way to end his pontificate. Benedict has always been his own man. I think he is setting a good example, that when one needs a rest, one may take it.

2) Benedict was never the exciting rock-star type pope that John Paul II was. But in his own way, Benedict is making an impact, even at the end. He is reminding the world that the tradition is deep… really deep… and if one needs resources for facing difficult situations (e.g. wanting to resign) one can find them there if one looks.

The Catholic tradition is so huge that it is hard for any one person just to comprehend the size of it (thousands of years and millions of people), much less understand it. As a friend of mine recently said of St. Thomas Aquinas – who is just one of thousands of major figures in the tradition – “Saint Thomas wrote 8 million words. And I haven’t read them all.”

Pope Benedict had a problem and he went to the tradition to solve it, in a precedented, but non-typical way. Smart man.

3) I will miss Benedict’s humility. I will also miss his environmental teaching. Benedict installed solar panels on the Vatican’s roof, made a goal of the Vatican becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral country, and spoke many times on the need to protect the environment. He also, of course, supported all the other teachings of the Church, but on the environment he worked to push forward some important new teachings for our times.

4) While I am truly surprised that this happened right now, I am also not entirely surprised that this is the way Benedict decided to end his pontificate. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to be pope.  He accepted the role reluctantly. A few years ago when he visited the tomb of Pope Saint Celestine V – the pope who made resigning from the papacy possible – I thought that this might be the way Benedict chose to go out.

5) Who will succeed Pope Benedict? I have no idea. But I am sure that whatever happens things will turn out just fine. As another friend of mine noted today “The papacy is an office, not a man.” The institution of the Roman Catholic Church will roll on, with all its excesses and deficiencies, while the human parts are switched out over the millennia. It is both a sad and exciting time. Something new – and yet not new – for us to experience.

So in conclusion, should Pope Benedict XVI have stepped down? I think we, as outsiders, simply have to agree that only he knows the answer to that question. And since he is the only one that knows, we just have to trust his judgment and agree that, yes, he is doing the right thing.

What are your thoughts on the Pope’s resignation?

“Why a Four Degree Celsius Warmer World Must Be Avoided” Infographic

The World Bank (not known for its bleeding-heart environmental activism) has issued a new report on global warming entitled “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 Degree C Warmer World Must Be Avoided.”

Why should we avoid it? Because it would be verging on apocalyptic. Coral reefs dead, rainforests dead, sections of the tropics becoming uninhabitable due to heat, spreading deserts, ice sheets collapsing, rising sea levels inundating cities and entire countries… The infographic below tries to be optimistic, but it is best to know the truth: we are currently a ship of fools sailing for planetary-scale disaster. So much for tending God’s garden (this will be the second time we’ve lost that job!).

Politically there is no will  (at least in the USA and other major CO2 emitters) to fix the problem. As I have said before, I think we are being forced into the geoengineering option, because the technical solution, no matter how crazy it is, is not as difficult as the moral-political solution.

In any case, enjoy the graphic, and check out the others at the Visual.ly environment section.

A 4 Degree Warmer World – We can and must avoid it infographic by worldbank.

Responding to the Murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School

Several posts on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings have come out, and I just want to share some here.

Why do teachers protect their students during a shooting? Because they care deeply about their students.

We see it again at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and we stand in awe of this courage and commitment to young lives. What is it that compelled principal Dawn Hochsprung to charge the shooter who threatened her school and kids? What prompted teacher Victoria Soto to position herself before a huddle of students, making herself the shooter’s target?

During the Virginia Tech massacre, Holocaust survivor and engineering professor Liviu Librescu gave his life while his students escaped, blocking the door with his body, while he was shot through the door. Many Sandy Hook teachers acted similarly. Let their heroism be remembered.

Gun control is a pro-life issue, by the way. I have heard people claim otherwise. Fr. James Martin:

Gun control is a religious issue. It is just as much of what many religious people call a “life issue” or a “pro-life issue,” as is abortion, euthanasia or the death penalty (all of which I oppose), and programs that provide the poor with the same access to basic human needs as the wealthy (which I am for). There is a “consistent ethic of life” that views all these issues as linked, because they are.

More on the idolatry of guns:

BACK IN 1990, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued this warning: “The religious community must … take seriously the risk of idolatry that could result from an unwarranted fascination with guns, which overlooks or ignores the social consequences of their misuse.” Two decades later, about 660,000 more Americans have been killed by guns, with a million more injured.

Yes, 660,000 dead in 22 years. That’s a Civil War scale death toll, and we call it normal. One million since 1968. The British paper The Telegraph comments:

The statistics are even more heart-breaking when applied to the young. The slaughter of children by gunfire in the United States is 25 times the rate of the 20 next largest industrial countries in the world combined. If you add them all up, since the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968, well over a million Americans, children and adults, have been shot to death, and even now 80 people die in this manner every day. The terrible slaughter on Friday is not as unusual as it should be.

And what about other nations without firearms, are they not plagued by illegal guns with no-one able to stop them? How about Japan? In 2006, they had only two firearms deaths. Two. In 2008 the US had 12,000.

Of the world’s 23 “rich” countries, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America’s.

But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world’s least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.

But what price freedom? Don’t we need all these guns to protect us from government tyranny? If one is that paranoid, one should consider that perhaps widespread gun ownership is exactly what the tyrannical powers want right now. A population in fear. A population without trust, fragmented. No Second-Amendment-mandated militias organized to “save” you. Yes, if you are one of those types, you have already been had.

Gun rights advocates also argue that guns provide the ultimate insurance of our freedom, in so far as they are the final deterrent against encroaching centralized government, and an executive branch run amok with power… I have often suspected, however, that contrary to holding centralized authority in check, broad individual gun ownership gives the powers-that-be exactly what they want.

After all, a population of privately armed citizens is one that is increasingly fragmented, and vulnerable as a result. Private gun ownership invites retreat into extreme individualism — I heard numerous calls for homeschooling in the wake of the Newtown shootings — and nourishes the illusion that I can be my own police, or military, as the case may be. The N.R.A. would have each of us steeled for impending government aggression, but it goes without saying that individually armed citizens are no match for government force. The N.R.A. argues against that interpretation of the Second Amendment that privileges armed militias over individuals, and yet it seems clear that armed militias, at least in theory, would provide a superior check on autocratic government.

But ultimately, this is about some kind of freedom, right? People want guns.

“How could we have let this happen?”

It is a horrible question because the answer is so simple. Make it easy for people to get guns and things like this will happen.

Children will continue to pay for a freedom their elders enjoy.

This matter is our choice.  We have unwittingly, collectively, chosen something horrible.  But we can choose again and choose better. We do not have to live like this.

I pray that we as a nation find the strength to make a better choice. Deuteronomy 30:19:

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.

Amen.

—

If you contributed one of the links, thank you.

Child Sacrifice at the Altar of the Gun God

The Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut is one of the most horrific spree killings we have had in our nation, ever. And none of them seem to ever have any effect on our lax national gun laws. There are many other problems at stake here too, such as care for the mentally ill, media violence, media sensationalization of spree killers, and so on. But the gun aspect of this is obvious. It just happens over and over again. Predictable. Expected. Routine.

Why then do we never seem to take measures to stop future massacres?

I have no answer, I just have a comparison.

The Hebrew Scriptures have a recurrent theme of child sacrifice. Child sacrifice was something the Hebrew’s neighboring tribes did; these were the behaviors of Moloch and Baal worshippers. Child sacrifice was NOT something God wanted of his people, as is made clear over and over again in many and various ways.

We have accepted child sacrifice in our culture, and one of the idols we have chosen is the gun. In our culture we idolize guns and we implicitly recognize these periodic mass-murders and daily gun violence as an acceptable side-effect of our mania for power and violence.

This is horribly wrong, and only a true believer in the gun god can’t see the connection. Nicholas Kristof reported (h/t Charlie Camosy) that the NRA commented that the school attack in China, with a knife, shows that it’s not just a gun problem. But NONE of those children died. Still absolutely horrible! But alive. Only the true believer in the gun god cannot see the connection.

Other countries do not have this problem; this is an American gun-cult problem.

Are guns really a cult? Guns freed us from Britain and “tamed” the Wild West (by murdering the natives). Guns protect the righteous from evil (so it is said). People get an emotional high from practicing the faith (gun shops, shooting ranges, and gun shows). And the Second Amendment is the Holy Writ.

We have a cult with an origin myth and glorious history, practical good consequences (for some), collective effervescent feelings, and a religious text.

This is, needless to say, a religion of death. No matter how it is wrapped in patriotism and righteousness, if your first instinct after a mass shooting is to declare that guns are not the problem you are a true believer in the gun god. Please find a better god.

I am otherwise at a loss for words, so to close I am just going to post three links.

Two from CatholicMoralTheology.com, from Charlie Camosy and Dana Dillon.

Garry Wills says much the same as I do here, but more eloquently. I wrote this before reading his, but I guess this idea’s time has come. Maybe that means we can finally begin to purge ourselves of this demonic faith.

Physicists to Test Simulation Hypothesis (AKA Theism)

Huffington Post UK has a new very brief article stating that physicists at the University of Washington are going to test the simulation hypothesis – the theory that we are all living inside a giant computer simulation.

The simulation hypothesis has become something of a popular idea as of late, boosted by people such as transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom and atheist author Sam Harris.

I am interested in whether the experiment will conclude anything. I have my doubts, just because metaphysical questions like that don’t tend to be  testable in any conclusive way (that being sort of the definition of metaphysics). And no matter what data they do get, there may be better theories to explain it.We can always come up with more ideas why something is the case – data underdetermines theory

From the perspective of theism, the simulation hypothesis could be either problematic or validating. It does imply a “simulation engineer” after all. And that engineer would be “God.” Maybe not the God theists currently believe in, but perhaps it could be. After all, as Sam Harris notes on his blog, if the simulation hypothesis is correct and we gain the same power to produce simulations as the one we are currently inhabiting, then its just a matter of time before some religion creates a simulation which validates its theology. (And I appreciate Harris’s honesty here, admitting that the idea can undercut his own atheist position.)

A rather strange and humorous idea, I think. I wonder what people will think of next?