#281 Interesting Links XXXIII

Why Augustine wrote, why Calvin wrote, why I blog: “I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write.”

According to Senator Jim Webb, there are only about 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan, the so-called central front in the war on terror.  He also compares the country to Lebanon.  The trouble I have thinking about that Afghanistan is that we officially consider it a country, and I think that clouds our thinking and our overall vision for its future.  That thinking and the attempt and central planning and cohesion is what has doomed its peoples to misery in recent history.  Meanwhile, Matthew Hoh, a former Marine captain, has resigned his commission with a letter posted at the link above because he's convinced that the war is fueling the very insurgency it seeks to defeat.  A Russian soldier who spent time in Afghanistan in the 80s shares similar thoughts.

John Hobbins has a short introduction with some resources on the Ethiopian Orthodox church.  They have 81 books in their Bible.  I have a hard enough time getting through 66 books in one year.

Steve Wynn, a guest on the Rush Limbaugh show, states the following: "Government never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history."  Rush wholeheartedly agreed of course as does his faithful flock that attends his services each weekday via radio.  But Mark Shea, who bothers to do a bit more critical thinking than Rush could ever dream about, fleshes out the implications of that comment.  As he points out, Rush still believes in the innate goodness of mankind left to his own devices.  Shea, a Catholic, knows better:

"Then let us 'immediately' get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, since these immense and costly government interventions cannot possibly help raise the standard of living for these nations. We must also re-write our history books in order to testify to the faith propositions that the anti-trust acts, labor laws and child labor laws of government never raised the standard of living for a single human being in a sweat shop. Likewise, the wise and good practices of business from 1929 to 1933 were 'wholly' responsible for ending the Depression and the state did not help a single solitary person. Nor did the vast government undertaking of the Allies from 1939 to 1945 help a single solitary person.

Of course, what this ideological parrot 'really' means is that the state has no business interfering with laissez faire capitalism, but has every right to impose the End to Evil crowd's vision of Redemption Through Democratic Capitalism on sundry countries that need to be bombed into salvation. He has 'immense' faith that our government adventures in nation-building in Iraq, Afghanistan and (who knows?) Iran will improve the lives of those who survive the next Shock and Awe campaign. He just doesn't want the state to bother with the common good when it gets in the way of his worship of capitalism as an article of Sacred Tradition."

While Shea's at it, he also calls out Glenn Beck: "anybody who accepts, as an adult, the truth claims of Mormonism concerning, oh, the notion that the Book of Mormon is something besides a transparent forgery, that Jews lived in the New World in the time of Christ, that there was a Great Apostasy, and the multiple other fraudulent and bogus claims which constitute the founding narrative of Mormonism--that person is not demonstrating much in the way of critical thinking skills and it is inadvisable to trust that person as a mentor and guide."

A large part of the housing crises was the frenzy, 5-6 years ago, saying "Buy now!  Interest rates have never been lower!  Home prices only go up!  Housing is a great investment!"  All of those statements have been shown the be a myth.  Now of course, we are bailing the fools out along with the citizens who are ready to purchase a home before April.  The rest of us are screwed... yet another redistribution of wealth that both Republicans and Democrats are happy to take part in.  CATO does a good job of debunking that crap.

Twelve years after The Lancet published an article linking Autism to the MMR vaccine, they retract it.  Dr. Andrew Wakefield who wrote the article is responsible for more harm to children over the past 12 years than perhaps anyone else in the country, and the effects of the psychological scare he put into ignorant parents won't go away soon.  That's been reported ad nauseum.  But what about the culpability of The Lancet, the British medical journal that published his article?  My understanding was that articles that made their way to publication were, by definition, peer reviewed, meaning that they were subject to rigorous review standards by experts in the field.  Fool that I was, I thought the methods were reviewed, the evidence analyzed, and the study repeated where possible, before publishing.  I believe... let me rephrase... I believed that scholarly journals REQUIRED this sort of filtering before releasing new info, ESPECIALLY info this actionable.  My response to the Jenny McCarthy's of the world was always, "Show me a peer reviewed article from a medical journal that proves your claims?"  Before, they could always point to Wakefield's article.  So I felt vindication when it was debunked.  But then I felt like I was on shaky ground all over again when I realized it wasn't just Wakefield's article.  It was also The Lancet's.

America's cowardly reaction to September 11th in a picture worth a thousand words from an unsurprising source.  Hint: it's no longer about freedom, it's about national security at all costs.

Michael Bird defends J.I. Packer against his, wait for it... Reformed critics.  According to Iain Murray, "Unity is overrated."  Thankfully, as I tried to show in my last post, Rowan Williams and Joseph Ratzinger disagree, and have made significant strides to maintain (Williams) and create (Ratzinger) unity.

News from our humane facility at Guantanamo Bay: "The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, 'is very far down the list of things they did,' the official said."  Score one point for displaying American values, and showing that we don't have to stoop to their level to beat them!  After all, we didn't behead anyone.  Or as Jason Kuznicki says,

"Hooray! We’re still better than the other guys!  There comes a point when the shelter of moral relativism just doesn’t keep the rain out anymore.  For me, that point arrived when we turned our back on the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and its presumption of innocence even for war criminals, turned our back on our treaty obligations, turned our back on due process, and when we embraced the very Soviet torture techniques that we not so long ago risked civilization itself to end. That was enough for me.  But if others reach that point at wiener-slicing, hey, welcome to the party."

As Andrew Sullivan repeatedly quotes from Orwell's Animal Farm, "To see what is in front of ones nose needs a constant struggle."  Indeed.  But the American electorate is averse to struggle.

F.A. Hayek argues for government sponsored health insurance for the poor?  Count me as surprised.    An excerpt from The Road to Serfdom: "Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance... the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong."  Read that sentence one more time if you didn't quite get it.  It took me two reads.  Never thought you'd hear that out of Hayek, did you?  But I have seen similar statements by Adam Smith that would make modern day capitalists cringe.  "Shut up Adam!  You too Friedrich!  You are ruining our narrative!"

#280 Canterbury and Rome Shaping the Future

This is old news, but I think Rowan Williams' response to the 2009 vote of the U.S. Episcopal Church convention represents the best hope of the worldwide (not just Anglican) church for how to handle the biggest ecclesiastical challenge our generation has or will face.  The Archbishop of Canterbury's speech is entitled Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future and is essentially his response to the two most controversial resolutions of the U.S. church last summer: D025, which allowed for the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops, and C056, which allowed for liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships.

Interestingly, just four months later the head of another large global denomination of Christians, Williams' counterpart in Rome, Joseph Ratzinger, issued an apostolic constitution, entitled Anglicanorum Coetibus, which paved the way for Anglicans to be welcomed into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining their distinctive liturgical practices.  The effect will be to allow a set of divergent practices to co-exist within one global communion, a sort of two-track system within the RCC.  It's a remarkable concession for Rome to make.

Below is my own short summary of Williams' proposal.  I think the parallels with Ratzinger's move are worth thinking through.

In the first paragraph, Williams affirms the Episcopalian commitment to the wider Anglican communion.  He acknowledges, however, the divide and the anxiety that the Episcopalian convention has created.  Overall, he wants to raise two issues.

One has to do with the challenge of calling for a moratoria on same-sex unions.  How can the Episcopal Church now turn its back on those LGBT members who have been led to expect the support of the Christian body?  How can you cut-off a part of the body that you have previously integrated?  He makes a disclaimer that reinforcing prejudice, or question the civil liberties, human dignity, or place within the body of Christ of LGBT people is not acceptable.  But the question is should the church be free to publicly recognize these marriages as analogous to what he calls, "Christian marriage"? 

Because of two thousand years of church history which would have answered in the negative, an affirmative answer would required the most painstaking exegesis, theological grounding, and wide acceptance both within the communion and with ecumenical dialogue partners.  This wide acceptance and theological and exegetical grounding is not currently the case, and therefore a same-sex blessing would lack the blessing of the church catholic and the sanction of the Anglican communion in particular.  So human rights are not necessarily at issue.  What is at issue is how a person living in incongriguity with the church's teaching act as a representative for that church.  Furthermore, societal norms should not necessarily be normative for the church.

The second overall issue has to do with how the local church makes decisions regarding sensitive and controversial matters.  Specifically, the local church needs some mechanism by which it incorporates the judgment of the wider communion so as not to become, over time, unrecognizable to the church catholic.  Some issues are of such small significance that it is desirable that they be handled locally.  As much as the local church may want some issues to fall under this category immediately, this recognition among the broader church often takes time.  Furthermore, what we decide as a body in global communion is more likely to be guided by the Holy Spirit than are the disparate decisions of thousands of local congregations.  That's not to say that this global consensus has not gone severely astray throughout church history.  There is a legitimate danger there that we assume too much.  But the opposite danger is that our churches stray so far from each other over time that the body no longer recognizes its own parts.

When a local decision is controversial, the question should be raised as to whether the development would have the effect of isolating the local church and making it unrecognisable to others within the communion.  Furthermore, the question is then raised in ecumenical conversations, "Who speaks for your communion?"  We need clarity there.  Not surprisingly, pastoral concerns have often been cited as reasons for divergences in local practice.  Once divergence occurs, the question is then raised as to whether the divergent practices are compatible with each other within a single communion.  To accept local divergence without challenge is to reconceive Anglican polity as a "loose federation" rather than as a "theologically coherent community of Christian communities."

The federalist approach seems the appropriate one in our globalized world but it would be a divergence from the traditional practice of the Anglican communion.  Proposals have been made to facilitate the communion in shared decision making and to help individual churches see beyond local concerns.  These include the Covenant and the moratorium.  Their purpose is not exclusivity but to create interdependence and thus community.  But some will not be persuaded by these proposals.  So, given the irreconcilable difference, how can unity possibly be maintained?  This is where we reach the center piece of Williams' proposal.  The communion can be sustained, given the situation, only through a "two-fold ecclesial reality" with one body of local churches fully sharing consensus views of the global church on how the church should be and behave and able to speak in ecumenical dialogue for the church as a whole while the other body would be related in less formal ways and with fewer formal expectations.

Williams calls this a two-track model.  That is, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage.  One of which decides that local autonomy is the prevailing value, while the other is able to represent the communion in ecumenical dialogue.  It is imporant not to see the two-track system as a schism, but rather as two styles of church polity co-existing within one communion.  The two-track system creates its own set of issues of course.  For example, were a province to choose to diverge from the global communion in a particular area of church practice, would local churches within that province be granted more autonomy to diverge from the divergent province back toward the global consensus?

To conclude, what appears to be a crisis could turn out to be an opporunity.  After all, the point of all this discussion is to become the church God wants us to be.  A key element is mutual respect for each other's convictions.

#279 The Most Nutritious Foods

If any word sums up my generation it is... cynicism.  The grunge era, epitomized by Nirvana, was a reaction against the excess of the 80s both in music and fashion.  It was a reaction against passion; a reaction against expression; a reaction against desire.  It was a reaction against nerd as a way of being; a reaction against being into overly into anything; a reaction against looking as though you cared.

One definition for a nerd is "a single-minded expert in a particular technical discipline or profession."  It is someone who is overly enthusiastic about a particular topic.  Computer-nerds are obsessed with computers, learn everything they can about them.  They were mocked.  Some people are into their religion and are not shy about flaunting that before others.  These people were mocked.  Now we're a generation afraid to stand for much of anything.  In the 80s, they sang, "We are the world."  They still believed.  In the 90s, we sang, "Rape me my friend."  We are nihilists.

But this repression by our peers, resulted in a nerd, or two, or three, buried in all of us children of the 90s yearning to breathe free.  For example, I'm a list-nerd.  I have an obsessive impulse to make lists.  I get random ideas in my head and then have to make a list.  So in one particular case, I found a website called world's healthiest foods.  It's a list of the 150 or so healthiest foods in the world based on detailed studies of nutrients per calorie.  Great list, but the problem was that the list was too big and it had several items that are hard to find in the grocery store or are not a part of the typical American recipe.

So I took that list of 150, dumped the 56 most common into a big spreadsheet along with the respective nutrition data, and then ranked the foods by two criteria: 1) the diversity of nutrients in the food, and 2) the density of nutrients in the food.  Some foods were had high concentrations of a few very important nutrients.  Others weren't necessarily highly concentrated, but contained such a variety of important nutrients that they cover a lot of bases in each bite.  The best foods had both qualities.  I let the spreadsheet do the work and below is the result: a list divided up into what I consider to be the three main categories of the world's most nutritious foods.  If you eat these 30, you should be covered.

Vegetables
1. Spinach
2. Tomatoes
3. Romaine Lettuce
4. Asparagus
5. Broccoli
6. Green beans
7. Green peas
8. Cauliflower
9. Celery
10. Bell peppers

Fruits/Snacks
1. Strawberries
2. Sunflower seeds
3. Raspberries
4. Almonds
5. Oranges
6. Kiwi
7. Papaya
8. Cantaloupe
9. Watermelon
10. Grapefruit

Proteins
1. Shrimp
2. Salmon
3. Eggs
4. Soybeans
5. Kidney Beans
6. Cod
7. Beef
8. Tuna
9. Halibut
10. Lentils

Some comments:

• I know, I've heard a tomato is not technically a vegetable, but we treat it and eat it like one, so it's in my vegetable category.
• Spinach is the overwhelmingly most nutritious food in the world both from a diversity and nutrient concentration standpoint.
• The vegetables are much more nutritious than the fruits.  So, for example, the fifth place vegetable, broccoli, is actually slightly more nutritious than the first place fruit, strawberries.
• Romaine lettuce is surprisingly very nutritious.
• Berries are very nutritious, particularly strawberries and raspberries.  The problem is that they are also very expensive.  I need to create a nutrient per dollar list.
• You may be surprised to not see apples on the list.  In fact, of the 56 foods that I profiled, they ranked 55th.  They're not worth the money.
• Seafood is the way to go in terms of protein.  Problem is they're expensive, and can contain excessive mercury levels, so moderation is important.  Supplement with eggs, beans, and beef.
• Yes, beef made the list but chicken didn't.  Blame the spreadsheet.  Those are the facts.  Chicken is simply not as nutrient dense or diverse as beef.

#278 An Early Easter Thought

The latest post from Michael Spencer who is in the process of dying:

"The ultimate apologetic is to a dying man.  That is what all those “Where is God?” statements in the Psalms are all about. They are, at least partially, invitations to Christians to speak up for the dying.  All the affirmations to God as creator and designer are fine, but it is as the God of the dying that the Christian has a testimony to give that absolutely no one else can give.  We need to remember that each day dying people are waiting for the word of death and RESURRECTION.

The are a lot of different kinds of Good News, but there is little good news in “My argument scored more points than you argument.” But the news that “Christ is risen!” really is Good News for one kind of person: The person who is dying.  If Christianity is not a dying word to dying men, it is not the message of the Bible that gives hope now.  What is your apologetic? Make it the full and complete announcement of the Life Giving news about Jesus."

The failure of the Christian Apologetics is that it keeps trying to answer the question of the atheist rather than asking the question with the atheist.  Today we answer questions; we think it better to answer. Job, David, and Jesus all thought it better to ask them.  Rather than dispatching the mocking thief on the cross with his superior knowledge about the divine plan, Jesus wondered and suffered aloud with the thief.  He spoke up for and with the dying when he said, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

And Jesus was on to something:  To die is to be forsaken by God; and we all are.  The atheist is on to something: God is dead to a world forsaken by him.  Because of death and death alone, everything has ceased to matter; life is meaningless.  But there are three simple words that, after everything else has ceased to matter, make everything matter: "Christ is risen."  In a world where everyone's fate is death, to hope is to answer affirmatively with the liturgical refrain, "He is risen indeed."  In a world where death robs existence of meaning, the only chance at getting it back is resurrection.

#277 February Modified Protestant Chronological Practical Bible Reading Plan

Feb 3-5: Num 13-15, Ps 90, Num 16-24
Feb 6-8: Num 25-36
Feb 9-11: Duet 1-11
Feb 12-14: Duet 12-23
Feb 15-17: Duet 24-34, Ps 91
Feb 18-20: Jos 1-12
Feb 21-23: Jos 13-24
Feb 24-26: Judg 1-10
Feb 27-Mar 1: Judg 11-21