1. If you look past irrelevant political polemics … the puzzle is interesting.
2. Russia and China.
3. A satirical tale.
4. Your government and its expenditures.
5. Black or not was likely less relevant than the common shared Semitic heritage.
6. Of science and message.
7. Why Biden is (still) a bad choice for Iraq oversight. Although it becomes more and more clear that Biden is just plain a bad choice for basically everything.
8. Obama’s NIH choice and ID.
9. Watching Obmacare’s hope/change morph into same-old/same-old but just bigger and more repellent.
10. Drones are interesting because they are less expensive … and some consequences.
11. Veils.
12. The motive behind capitalism.
13. A map of death and despair.
14. Russalka … a short film (and I might note also a Dvorak opera).
15. A likely subtext of why the left is so enamoured of public healthcare options (but not one they want on the front burner).
16. Left and right … blogging and linking.
17. A libertarian fisks the President.
18. On miracles and creation … for myself I think an awful lot of real miracles are very prosaic.

It is often the case that long standing beliefs about historical trends are found to be in error. This happens so often that one might argue that it the extreme reverse of this is actually true. That the long standing beliefs about historical events and motivations have it exactly wrong. For example, the BEF approach to trench warfare in WWI was in fact innovative, tactically responsive, and did in fact learn from their mistakes … the reverse of the common notion.

The popular impression of that Christians (and others) have about the growth of Christianity in the first 3 centuries hinges on martyrdom. It is often quoted and said that oppression and violence against a group of that sort causes it to spread and strengthen. However, in class this weekend, I learned that this impression on the growth of Christianity in the first few centuries and the example of the martyrs being a primary inspiration for the movement is wrong.

So the, what did drive Christian growth? Apparently, it was the widows and orphans that were the key. In the first few centuries of the Roman empire and the ancient world in general infanticide was common and the lot a widow was very very hard. It was common for a family that had an infant abandon it on the side of the road. They might hope that slavers might pick it up (and it should be noted the lot of slaves was nowhere near as bad as slavery in the Americas which in turn is nowhere nearly as bad as it is in today in the modern era. Slaves likely had as much or more upward mobility than a wage labourer.) Christians began the practice of collecting these infants and either adopting them or bringing them to orphanages which they established. Who ran these orphanages? Likely it was run by monks and widows (living now in convents) … supported through contributions of Christian parishes and wealthy Christians. It was this example and practice and not the example of martyrs which inspired many to consider and join the Christian faith.

This means that Christian charity not Christian heroism (martyrdom) was a more important driver of Christian expansion in the time of persecution. There are two points to draw from this. First this is not meant to deny the important example of those martyrs of the first centuries or even of today. Second, that martyrdom while convincing others of the depth and solidity of the faith was not (and likely remains not) an important evangelical technique but instead that charity was and still remains the key.

This is the version of an article for our parish newsletter on faith and science. The longer version is posted here.  It is my hope that this version is accessible to a general audience (the longer version I’ve been told is not so easy to read, but I still think with some effort can be read by any interested reader).

Science and religion

Because the terms science and religion are enormously broad topics they need to be restricted. Science will refer to physics. Religion will mean Christian interaction with that science.

Natural science (physics) has gone through three major stages. These stages will be discussed in turn and the relationship with religion examined below.

Stage 1: Geometry

From the time of the Greek golden age through the 16th century the understanding of nature was based on pure geometry. Study of Euclid was crucial because geometry was seen as the key principle for understanding nature. Aristotelian cosmology and the Pythagorean movement are examples of this view of nature.

In the second through fifth centuries orthodox Christian theology arrived at a basic understanding of the relationships between God, man, and the world which remain dominant with minor variations to this day. Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa both often explicitly tied theology with philosophy (and natural philosophy or physics). One important 2^nd century philosopher and contemporary of Origen was Plotinus. That Origen and Plotinus each attended the others talks and interacted frequently is exemplary of the relationship between science and religion at that time.

Stage 2: An Analytic View

Between the time of Galileo and Newton the conception of nature shifted. The understanding of natural laws changed to a description of motions and interactions of objects given by formula, e.g., Newton’s three laws of motion. Descartes laid essential foundations of algebra to describe and prove geometrical concepts. Ways of thinking moved from the constructive geometric view to an analytic one. Later mathematical developments made the analytical approach immensely successful.

In this time period Christian theology (in the West) also underwent a revolution. The theological turmoil of Reformation and counter-Reformation occurred. This changed what Christianity meant for the West. Too, the relationship between natural philosophy and theological thought changed. Science and religion parted ways. The Origen/Plotinus relationship disappeared. While a few priests (e.g., Mendeleev and Priestly) contributed to science, religion’s interactions with science became rare. Some theology would come into direct conflict with modern scientific views, e.g., evolution vs literal creation accounts.

Stage 3: Symmetry.

In the early 20^th century mathematical developments began another shift in our understanding of how the universe is constructed. The mathematical inventive work of Emmy Noether, Hamilton, and Riemann made this shift possible. Einstein, Kaluza, and Klein first used this new math, specifically a geometrical property known as symmetry, to provide the conceptual framework of physics. In 1954, Yang and Mills defined the Standard Model based on these ideas. The Standard Model is the current best model of the particles and forces found in nature. Geometry (as symmetry) has returned and again today drives our understanding of nature.

The separation between science and religion which developed since the 20^th century has not been resolved. With a few exceptions, like Father John Polkinghorne, who was an important theoretical physicist and is presently an Anglican theologian, little theological thought is being put into trying to reunite and reconcile science and religion.

Natural science over the past 3000 years has gone the distance, from a geometrically motivated view of the universe it traversed through an analytic approach and subsequently returned to a geometrically motivated view. In the first period there was no tension between theology and science. During the second, a separation occurred which continues today.

The complexity and scope of what physics does understand regarding the large and small scale structure of space-time and the natural world is far greater than in the 3^rd century. Yet, a theology asserting where God stands in relationship to man and His universe should be developed which is in accord with modern physics. This should be an active and viable task for theology today.

1. Le tour, stage 6.
2. Manners are important, perhaps however that overstates the case.
3. Of private virtue and libertarian ideas of government.
4. Someone with a little more than casual information about Ms Palin talks.
5. Ms Pelsoi gets one right … like a stopped clock?
6. Being Christian in Iran. Or the UK?
7. In which I agree (with statement #1).
8. Of whom I am first, not hyperbole.
9. Well, the left in its heated overstatements on healthcare now finds breast cancer one of the %.001 extreme medical emergencies.
10. Praising Obama for getting something right.
11. More notes on Mr Obama getting the past wrong in Moscow.
12. Remembering a famous Serbian who came to America and changed the world.

It seems progressives have it ingrained that private healthcare insurance are not healthcare services or products that I’ve purchased. This is a lie. It is the essential lie that is wrecking the current debate on healthcare. From Tuesday’s comments here are to remarks to this assertion which I take as typical:

Actually you’ve ‘paid for’ a bet. You’ve betted that you will require certain expensive healthcare over the term of your policy. Your insurance company has bet that you will not. If it wins, they keep your premiums and make a profit. If you win, they pay for your healthcare.

and

As Boonton points out, you haven’t purchased healthcare per se, but healthcare coverage. And I’m not sure who “on the left” “forget” that.

Let me start with a little analogy.

Two men are neighbours. Their families both regularly have a Saturday evening barbecue at which sometimes they chat. One day they both start remarking on a very large boulder uphill of their properties. The way it is propped up it looks like it could hit one or the other of their houses. One of them suggests that every Saturday each one will put $20 a kitty. When (and if) erosion or other processes loosen the huge rock to crack into one of their houses … thy guy whose house is hit gets whatever was in the pot.

Imagine that rock was above a town … and the town agreed to a similar deal … and that contributions were fixed, contributors were voluntary, and that only contributors would be splitting the funds collected funds when the rock released. And that the funds getting large enough needed to hire an accountant to manage those funds … and that some rules needed to be established to apportion that sum in a equitable manner when rock caused damage to various houses in differing degrees. And voila … one has established an insurance company (not healthcare … but that is a distinction without difference).

This essentially the “bet” in the first quoted remark above or the “coverage” vs “product” in the second. What is the status of that money. When the person who’s house is struck has to pay for repairs … is that paid for with his money? It seems obvious that the answer to that is yes, he is paying with his money.

Healthcare coverage today is quite expensive. I don’t have the figures [note: I might ask at my employer for a rough estimate of what our companies healthcare costs per month run.] but I’m guessing offhand that $6k to $12k per year easily is being put to my healthcare insurance for my family of four. The first objection insists that this is a “bet” (which is an odd way to put actuarial calculations). Actuarial evolution is the means by which insurance companies make money. But the amount above the co-pay for medical services and medicines that are purchased on my families behalf is money from the “kitty” above. It is mine. It comes from my participation in the pool. The quantity that must be put in is related directly to mathematical statistical models of our population and our behaviour. Yet it is my money in exactly the same way that the money that money belonged the gentleman above with the damaged house. The movement from the two men to the town is pretty clear. When the money is spent is it still money belonging to and deriving directly from the people benefiting. That there is a “bet” involved is an unimportant detail. That this is “coverage” vs “payment” is a syntactic dodge.

Calling the health insurance that a person earns and receives as on of the means of  remuneration for services rendered to an employer not a thing for which he has bought and paid is rhetorical thievery. The left will tell you today that these actuarial services are stealing from you. They will also deny that the private insurance company benefits are your money. And furthermore, that replacing these with greater government efficiencies will save incredible amounts. One wonders at the naivete at that sort of thinking. Greater. Government. Efficiencies. From what planet do these people originate? Medicare is a public healthcare program. There are private companies that exist solely for the purpose of navigating the arcane and Kafkan intricacies of Medicare paperwork on your behalf. Yep. More efficient indeed. Savings indeed. Mr Obama is indeed a great politician, that is if the term ‘great’ is a measure of the size and frequency of the the lies you tell.

1. On progressives and civil liberties … (blogger was down when I linked this but that should be temporary).
2. And the Keynsians are plugging for more and bigger stimuli. Reconsidering their hypothesis, is not an option apparently.
3. One bike in Le Tour … and a 40s style gal.
4. A judge and jury and healthcare.
5. I think he’s wrong too. You tell how much “more religious” a person is by how much of their time and self they devote to the same.
6. Obama, walking circles in Moscow … where Mr Obama rings the Quayle-o-meter … and not the usual  reception?
7. A call for “clear alternative visions”, something oddly enough the left never did during the Bush tenure.
8. Gay culture and Ms Palin.
9. Some history of usury.
10. Unfortunate slip of Mr Krugman’s.
11. What passes for standards in the beltway.
12. The fantastic in film for the remainder of 2009.
13. We can hope.

1. Biden and Israel.
2. A roundup from yesterday’s stage at le Tour.
3. This is not completely unrelated.
4. A post-theistic moral framework … which I plan to read carefully, but offer for discussion anyhow.
5. Some grist for the “smart” as a primary qualification for leadership roles mill.
6. Is our “stimulus” locally tailored?
7. Public healthcare and the UK.
8. What Obama plans to give up. But why?
9. A dissident passes.
10. First thoughts is going nuts on Charity in Truth (Benedict’s encyclical). That link is the first of many. How many secular or progressives will give it a serious reading and discuss online?
11. Beauty (and a foolish tree).
12. Wages, Wal-mart and choices Obama wants to take from us.
13. “There’s one piece of persistent dishonesty in the debate over health care that I would like to see vanish once and for all. It concerns the word…” and “hilzoy” didn’t get it. She has hers. I have mine … which is that private insurance isn’t the insurance I’ve paid for. I’d offer mine complaint is more common on her side than hers is on mine.
14. More skewed history from that man in the white house.
15. On Mr Obama’s South American mistake.

1. Benedict’s encyclical is out. It’s on a topic of wider interest than just the catholic faithful … public charity.
2. Rot and the modern state.
3. A supporter of Mr Obama’s non-statements/non-action regarding Iran is not so appreciative of his error regarding Honduras. A non-supporter wonders what the heck he’s considering regarding Iran.
4. Obama in Moscow. More here.
5. Pro-choice and reality.
6. On Ms Neda the Iranian martyr and a question. Why were all the pictures cropped? Who did that? Why?
7. Cycling and pain … a very scientific (heh) explanation.
8. Evolution and a number.
9. Getting the music right.
10. On the Ms Palin stepping down kerfuffle.

My laptop’s disk controller died. The disk seems fine … but evening blogging might be sporadic for the next few days as my access to the family computer will face competition. Some random thoughts:

1. Our office decided (kinda on the spur of the moment) to enforce a “everyone must take one week of vacation” this month … because it looks right now like we’ll be real busy in Q3 and Q4 so it would be good to get some vacation out of the way. My eldest daughter is in summer school through July so I’m “flexing” 1 1/2 days per week for the final 4 weeks of July. I’m going to coordinate my schedule with the weather and my training. So it looks like I’ll come out of July in really good shape (and with a house projects done too).
2. On Le Tour, Mark Cavendish is unbeatable in sprint these days. On Sunday I read a report that Tyler Farrar, not a bad sprinter himself, was unable to hold his wheel when Cavendish let fly. That’s amazing. And no, I don’t think there is a “real split” in the Astana team. I think it’s a tactic to get everyone to waste energy and time watching Lance … who is not their main threat. Remember he was the fourth strongest Astana rider Saturday.
3. I looked over the “health care” site that the White House hosts. Remarkably free of actual concrete policy ideas. No mention of “vouchers” either, oddly enough (which came up in conversation today).
4. The day after I tell my wife that “I haven’t had a flat tire in over a year” is the day before I have a flat tire. If that happened in a film people would think the writer was overusing a cliché.

1. Foreclosures and the economy. Plus rightful blame regarding selling the stimulus and the aftermath.
2. Hmm, if Mr Obama nominated Moses I wouldn’t support that either. Uhm, newsflash but Moses is dead.
3. Sexual slavery.
4. Pope Benedict’s next encyclical is to be out soon.
5. This is another locus of fragility in our society.
6. The upside of a layoff.
7. It’s diet, dude. Diets differ.
8. Socialized medicine.
9. Indurain won a few tours as a ITT specialist, Cancellara could too, with the right team support. More here.
10. On weak man arguments.
11. Obama lying to the American public? Say it ain’t so.
12. More waste.
13. Obama getting Honduras wrong may have repucussions.
14. A film.
15. Ms Delsol predicted this sort of thing.

So Mr Obama wants a national healthcare plan. The right opposes this and the left is doing it’s best to shut down debate and shunt discussion aside, because the objections are strong and many. However, the right might be using the wrong tactic. Perhaps the best tactic is to embrace the dark-side.

Mr Obama points out that with a National Healthcare plan that people like himself, i.e., the wealthy, would as he did for his grandmother still be able to pay for the care of their loved ones directly out of their pocket. Yet this is very problematic for his vision of nationalized healthcare. For it provides the essential loophole the rest of us need.

The rest of us, that is the normal working stiffs while on the first glance don’t have the wherewithall to have the ready cash to pay for emergency healthcare do in fact have the same. For, we are currently paying for all of our healthcare. The solution goes something like this:

1. An enterprising group of ordinary middle class people, who realize they can’t pay for emergency medical care which isn’t or is poorly covered by government coverage (or for example to skip to the head of the queue like the wealthy will be doing) will do what free people have done from the start. They’ll organize (an activity oddly enough Contitutionally protected).
2. By organizing in groups, collectively people can, uhm, spread their risk. Each will make monthly contributions to a collective pool, managed financially by a small number of administrators, who will figure costs, apportion and manage benefits, and invest funds. In fact there is a word for such organizations, they were formerly known and health care insurance companies. You might even find employers adding supplemental health care as a benefit to attract qualified, skilled, and attentive labor. I’d even go so far as to suggest that health care companies currently in place might jump at this market.
3. Mr Obama suggested that you can keep your current insurance. But this is not in fact what will occur. Your current insurance will magically transmute itself to be just supplemental insurance. If Mr Obama and the left decides this is dirty pool, it will become black market dirty pool, and I for one see know reasonable argument for why a person could not participate in such a market. If Mr Obama can use his ready cash … any schmoe should be able to join a risk pool to effectively do the same.
4. There is in fact a big fat plus to this plan. Supplemental insurance of this sort and in this market is completely (so far as I know) unregulated. It’s new unplowed ground. Unregulated health care markets are in fact exactly what Mr Obama thinks his plan is avoiding and also (not?) oddly enough exactly what I happen to think the health care market needs. Health care needs wild wooly unregulated markets to spur innovation. The unanticipated unregualted supplemental insurance market might provide at least a small sampling of this very thing.
5. Thus perhaps the best thing for the right to do is cede the healthcare proposal but fight for realistic cost controls and appraisals. That the taxes for this boondogle will not get out of hand, which will in turn cause the government insurance to cover and provide for in actuallity very little in the way of health care in the absence of supplemental income. This is actually what the right argues for, very minimal bare coverage for all and abillity to pay provides the caps on health care for the rest.

So the only stumbling block for this argument is one I don’t see as of yet. Is there any argument that would prevent supplemental insurance from springing up? Realistically I don’t see any difference between Mr Obama paying for his grandmother’s care and a group of people, in free association, collecting to provide the same and spreading the risk.

1. A comparison of Mr Obama’s acts put in Mr Bush’s shoes. I can’t really imagine an honest left leaning individual saying “no” to any significant fraction of those questions, although likely any number of those things were items they would (privately at least) condemn Mr Obama for doing.
2. I don’t know the contents of the ’64 bill or the ’57 for that matter … but as a for my conservative opinion I’d ask “did the bill improve the conditions for private citizens pursuit of happiness (=virtue).” I’d add that in ’64 I was only 2 (3 in December) so my contributions would be minimal to the debate at the time.
3. Not exactly truly useful but … interesting nonetheless, my youngest daughter and my mother are knitters.
4. The Internet and beauty … and on Liszt, Verdi with his Requiem is another example of a secular (avowed atheist I think) producing moving sacral music.
5. This event was noted elsewhere as a set-piece staged political theatrical production (the town hall was packed with supporters), which if done by the Bush admin would likely have gotten a less salutary treatment by the press. Isn’t that bias?
6. Two articles noted in which Christian thought meets the cultural present.
7. The Hell’s Angels in Denmark. Denmark had a particularly ethical response to Nazi occupation and their seeking Jews for pogrom, so one might consider that their ethical antennae are not broken … which means that one might not want to generically dismiss their response to the spread of Islamic culture as a Neanderthalian move.
8. Judicial candidates apparently must watch their associations. I don’t know what this means … but it may resurface.
9. Ben Myers almost always has thought provoking things to say. Here he begins to consider the difference between writing and blogging in the context of theology.
10. This is a point which is not being defended by the left. Right now, with the left’s domination the public airwaves and much print media, ignoring objections is an effective strategy of theirs. But there is a disconnect between the economic situation which they (and everyone) admits is still fragile and the desire to tack on new economic burdens (the W/M bill and healthcare).
11. The allegorical hermeneutic is one I’m learning right now reading Origen for a class.
12. I suspect this discussion of happiness has at its root that the definition of happiness today is too often interpreted as a ‘feeling’.
13. Two teammates Armstrong and Contador of Astana, and I think that unless there is a mishap (crash) Armstrong really will be riding in support of Contador … and contrary to many predictions will finish outside the top 10.
14. An Israeli offers his opinions on Mr Obama’s policy toward his homeland … and conjectures it’s strengthening the resolve of the policy which (on the surface) he is supporting. Of course Mr Obama is supposed to be “very smart” so perhaps this was his intent. And I put scare quotes on smart not because I doubt Mr Obama is smart or not … but that I think that smart is a measurement that can be casually made. Modern politicians are primarily actors on a stage. An excellent actor may be very good at his craft, but that isn’t the same as what a physicist or mathematician would mean by the statement “he’s smart.”

Well, in a long conversation on the fragility of our civilization with commenter Boonton, one point of contention is apparent. Mr Boonton thinks that the “inflection point” in economic, i.e., the rise of technology in the late 19th century means that comparing today’s culture and civilization to those before is a apples/oranges comparison. Now, everything is different. I demur.

What features characterize today’s technological culture:

• It is highly interconnected.
• That interconnection is fueled and aided by high speed cheap transportation.
• Continued technological advancement is essential.
• Population levels are staggering when compared earlier eras.

Western Rome fell. It was highly connected and had, for its day, cheap transportation with the Roman road system. Yet it fell, and standards of living and population levels dropped precipitously. The statement “standard of living dropped” this cannot be emphasized enough. Roman era was quite wealthy. Technology that existed, for example examining simple wares like fine china was not eclipsed until the 18th or 19th century. Literacy was almost universal in Rome, even the poor and the slaves could read. Charlemagne was illiterate … and a king, the first “Holy Roman Emperor.” Literacy levels of the Roman era were also not eclipsed in the West until … the 18th or 19th century.

Examine the pottery situation for a moment in the Roman era. Pottery shards happen to be a refuse item which survives for archaeologists to find. In Britian, after Rome retreated something quite surprising happened. Pottery vanished. A potters wheel is conceptually quite a simple thing. But it takes a little time to master. It takes just a little infra-structure to maintain. But … the culture that survived in Britain in the post-Roman times had not the wherewithal to do so.

The only holdout and exception then is technology. How fragile then is technology. It is assumed by many that text and our written records, which are in fact robust and repeated and kept in many places, will insure that our technological advancement and prowess is secure. Things however may in fact not be a secure was we imagine. For it is not the written record on which most of our technology rests but instead of on the unwritten and ineffable expertise of those keeping industrial technological machines running and improvements coming. Michael Polanyi notes the example of the German sale to Hungary of a light bulb manufacturing process. The machines were duplicated, the process written down, and training was completed. Two years after the installation was completed … the machine still had yet to produce a single working bulb. Why? Because the people running the machine were not able to transfer the knowledge of how to run the machine elsewhere.

Our industrial processes and indeed our academic scientific culture is ineffable. It is a culture transmitted by master to apprentice. It depends not only on the skills transferred but cultural norms and values which have to be assumed successfully by the student in order for the continued progress of technology, of science, and academic excellence.

Additionally there are hundreds of thousands, if not many milions, of interlocking industrial components which are required for our civilization to continue. Most of these have multiple sources. Many of these (thousands) are essential, the loss of just one, for example high power/voltage step down transformers, would spell disaster. It is likely that many of these thousands of essential cannot-live-without components, of which we are not really aware in our daily lives, depend on just a few experts to continue their production maintenance, and improvement. One pandemic could wipe out a number of experts in many of these components and … it is not implausible that for some few components the expert base might be lost. Then the social unrest of the pandemic would be acerbated with a failure of one or more key infrastructure components keeping things running. Which in turn causes, because of our very high population levels, starvation and deprivation … which causes the loss of more components and bam! Most of us, just like the survivors of the Western Roman region will be back at pre-civilization early iron age levels.

It might not be a pandemic of course. Our worldwide economies are tightly linked. A monetary crises might cause civil unrest. The resultant violence might leave us missing the people needed to replace the lost infra-structure in the wake of just that. Right now there are some who suggest that the academic industry is the next bubble, which might pop under the stress of the current economic woes. This might not leave the scientific culture which in part depends on university cultural elements intact. If advancement of technology ceased … do we depend on continued technological improvement or not? Our culture is dependent on cheap oil. While it is a matter of debate how long cheap oil will persist … it is not really a debate over that it will at some time cease to be cheap. When, is debated. That it will become dear is not. The unrest that might arise on transition from an oil based civilization to a petroleum-is-expensive one, like the other events noted above could be the proverbial straw, breaking the back.

The point is that there are still striking similarities between our culture and the Roman one. It failed … and perhaps a lesson there to be learned is that our time of peace and prosperity is not likely to be as permanent, nor is as robust as we pretend.

1. Surprise!
2. Construction in the US.
3. Hypocrisy.
4. Theodicy and history.
5. Hostile questions.
6. I’m opposed to Federal (and State) regulation of marriage (and a regular reader)… does that count?  Because that policy would certainly result in some areas not allowing it and other to do so.
7. Zoooom!!!
8. Ownership.
9. A young lady.
10. Sub-4. And media bias (assuming Fox = “the media”). And speaking of bias, the second link put scare quotes on the categorization of Ms Palin as a runner, a sub-4 hour marathon means that yes, indeed, she is a runner … scare quotes are inappropriate.
11. South America and some coup history.
12. Lessons for the rich.
13. Exactly.
14. Crises.
15. A film.

Chantal Delsol has a prior book to go along with The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century, a book titled Icarus Fallen. Tonight, I’m reading.

I did have a quick remark, which may or may not spur discussion. It seems to me Congress is becoming less and less influential? But is that because the Federal government in general is gaining power and that Congress is not doing so as quickly as the other branches so it only appears to be losing in influence? Rome as we all know had its Legislative body subsumed by the Executive. Why do we think that will not happen here?