Stones Cry Out

This is what passes for a "Middle East peach partner" these days.

Palestinian militant Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five consecutive life sentences for the murders of five people in terror attacks, has been elected to serve on Fatah’s Central Committee, and that is sparking new calls by left-wing Israeli politicians for his release. Freeing Barghouti would bolster the “moderate” Fatah organization, left-wing Israelis say.

Fatah’s recently-concluded congress in Bethlehem, its first in 20 years, elected Barghouti to fill one of 18 available places on its top decision-making body. Provisional results show that he received the third highest number of votes cast by delegates.

Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, is the Palestinian faction backed by the U.S. as a potential Mideast peace partner. It is engaged in a continuing feud with Islamist rival Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Despite the rift, Hamas has been demanding freedom for Barghouti along with hundreds of other prisoners in exchange for releasing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier abducted by Hamas more than three years ago. He is still being held in Gaza.

Barghouti was a leader of the Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, factions within Fatah which have been linked to – and in many cases claimed responsibility for – lethal attacks including suicide bombings. American citizens were among their victims.

The Fatah congress last week endorsed the Al-Aqsa Brigade as an official Fatah organ.

If this was something Israel was doing, the UN would be all over them with 8 Security Council resolutions.  But Fatah gets so many passes it’s amazing.

And the irony is, Israel will still be papered in UN resolutions.

1. An allegorical map.
2. A discussion of differences between Orthodox and the Catholic churches.
3. NASA resources, pointed out ostensibly for the homeschool crowd, but really useful for any family with kids (HT: Mark Shea).
4. A prediction validated.
5. A convert needing help.
6. A mad woman in the kitchen.
7. Family and Amsterdam.
8. Change is “scary”, yes, and when the change moves in the wrong direction that’s even scarier.
9. On obedience to spouse …  a convert’s perspective.
10. Fact checking Mr Obama… oops.
11. Well, I’m surprised … I’d have thought the figure closer to 95%, after all I think 40% was a low figure for useless documents in the preprint stream in academic physics.
12. Best Syrian blogging contest … and a snag (besides the ineffective performance of google’s automatic translator from Arabic to English).
13. Hmm, I think the tag-line/title overstates the case … after all they’re not talking about mothers-in-law/spouse or sibling rivalries.
14. Beautiful women and cheap leeches.
15. 10 subprime myths.
16. A question on achievement and metrics.

Things got a little testy at today’s White House press briefing when Fox News’ correspondent Major Garrett asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about unsolicited e-mails being sent to people who about healthcare reform:

The e-mail itself is not problematic. The White House is using this means of communication to get its message out to concerned voters. But the problem is somehow the White House is getting a hold of people’s e-mail addresses. I don’t have any idea how David Axelrod got my e-mail address. I don’t publish the address anywhere on purpose. I don’t want just anybody to have access to my e-mail address. I’ve never e-mailed the White House or sent anything to their flag@whitehouse.gov address because I don’t want to give that information to them. But it appears they managed to get it somehow anyway.

The irony here is that if David Axelrod paid any attention to anything I’ve read so far about healthcare reform he would quickly figure out that I am opposed to the President’s proposals.

So the question remains: how is the White House getting folks e-mail addresses and is the privacy of individuals being violated? Just how much information does the White House have and, more importantly, what are they going to do with it?

1. Plywood wheels!
2. 5-stroke engine?
3. If time permitted I’d fisk this. Suffice it to say claims that government spending are the proximate cause for the recover (when the majority of the stimulus remains to be spent) and oops pesky data contradicts the premise. Bleeding was thought to cure disease and often the patient recovered, too.
4. Right leaning humor, heh.
5. Obama/Pelosi Not in tune.
6. Cash for clunkers … to purchase clunkers.
7. Logic and global warming.
8. Medvedev speaks to the Ukraine. and an a colourful interpretation from the Ukraine.
9. Home schooling stats.
10. A book suggested.
11. Sudan.
12. Watching Afghanistan.
13. Off with her head … and that tag line is the main reason I linked that piece.
14. Insane civilization … ours.
15. Oh, Ninevah.

I agree with Glenn Beck that we haven’t reached the point where eugenics is being implemented as a matter of policy. However, when you look back at history, you understand the dangers that lie ahead in the health care debate. Click on the video below to see the whole story:

Shouting at congressional leaders is getting the Left all upset.  "This is not an appropriate form of protest!", they insist.  Fine, then.  Let’s use a form that the Left was all in favor of; throwing shoes at them.  (I’m sure a demonstration of this sort would be lauded as "patriotic", eh?"

(Hat tip: NRO)

Norman Geras yesterday pointed to a Dawkins quote and said some things which I agree (in which neither of us agree with Mr Dawkins) yet I would go further. He begins (the quote is from Mr Dawkins):

‘that imposing parental beliefs on children is a form of child abuse’ surely merits some clarifying explanation before we assent to it. It is, of course, easy as well as necessary to draw a distinction between putting a belief to children in a way that makes it plain to them that there are alternatives to, questions about, disagreements over it, and insisting on the belief as the sole unchallengeable truth. There’s a difference between trying to educate children in a spirit that encourages interest in the world and finding out about it, on the one hand, and indoctrination, on the other.

I don’t think this is really a reasonable point of view. The decision of whether there are “alternatives” depends in part on how strongly we feel the matter at hand is true and by contrast how strongly we believe the contrary is false. Take ethics. There are a variety of starting points for ethics, one of which is solipsism. We do not necessarily want to teach our children that solipsism is a reasonable basis for normative ethics even if some philosophers have suggested or explored that possibility (or even if some long lost civilization based its particular practices on that).

Mr Geras continues:

Again, must we not discriminate better from worse as between maintaining some standards of personal cleanliness and not doing so, or between behaving with consideration and kindness and being rude and dishonest? More generally, educating children involves, willy-nilly, the imparting of moral beliefs. This cannot be done without the presentation of some things as good and others as less good or downright bad. Even done in a non-doctrinaire way, it must involve a degree of active direction. It’s misleading, therefore, to pretend that only dogmatists and fanatics narrow the minds of their children to the available sum of human beliefs.

So the question I pose is as follows, examine this exchange attributed to St. John Chrysostom (wiki on St. John here):

“You cannot banish me, for this world is my Father’s house.”
“But I will kill you,” said the empress.
“No, you cannot, for my life is hid with Christ in God,” said John.
“I will take away your treasures.”
“No, you cannot, for my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.”
“But I will drive you away from your friends and you will have no one left.”
“No, you cannot, for I have a Friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me.
I defy you, for there is nothing you can do to harm me.”

Imagine a person with that sort of view of his faith (if that does not strike a chord or set an example to which you would aspire) and the way in which he sees the world. For more, I’d also recommend his very famous Paschal (Easter) homily as well, which might rightly be put in similar pride of place for the Church as the US places the Gettysburg address. Any educational process includes an implicit or explicit evaluation of the value of the “alternatives” suggested. How would this parent instruct his children? In yesterday’s discussion JA offered:

That being said, I think the idea that there’s something wrong with indoctrinating a child with one religion is an important one. Now it’s one thing if you are the liberal sort who says this is our tradition and this is what we do and this is what it means to us… but it’s quite another if you are more dogmatic and say this is what’s true, period.

I don’t find any way that a person, who is like St. John can do anything other but state that his faith is “what’s true, period.” It is my contention that those who assent to the notion as expressed in the quote above have a tepid faith specifically not a faith such as expressed by St. John above.

Former President George W. Bush walked a fine line between science and morality/ethics when he decided that existing embryonic stem cell lines, at the time, would be the only ones available for Federal grants.  Federal money would not be available to any new lines.

Contrary to some misinformed, partisan critics, he did not ban embryonic stem cell research.  Companies using private money were not restricted in any way.   Bush simply said that Federal money would be given out in what he believed was as moral and ethical a way as could be done at the time. 

The LA Times reported this week that a Stanford University study was done to determine the extent of this restriction.  The results show that the loudly-complaining scientists have put even tighter restrictions on themselves, making their protests disingenuous.

Read the rest of this entry

1. Considering Dawkins and imposition of beliefs on the young. Two remarks from me, first I’d guess that this person has not personally yet raised any kids and second the assumption that religious beliefs are the sort in which you “should teach that there are alternatives” presupposes a tepid sort of belief. You would not teach your child that the universe really doesn’t exist (solipsism) is “a viable option” for basing ethics because you don’t believe it is reasonable.
2. SSD cleaning.
3. Judgement vs vetting.
4. Matters the Democrats are dodging in the healthcare “debate”. Why the scare quotes.
5. Birther and truther, a graph.
6. Oddly enough the thing that struck me in this piece was his vision of “ideal” society, wifi, robust GDP, and universal healthcare. How tepid. And, in response to the main point, the problem is The Bottom Billion.
7. Exercise won’t make you thin … tell that to the endurance athletes of the world, they’ll likely disagree just a bit.
8. An Attack!!
9. On Sodom and Gomorrah two short pieces, here and here (the second is a response to the first).
10. Christian response to political oppression done right.
11. Turning it around.
12. A motive for Russian aggression against Georgia.
13. Afghanistan and marketing.
14. Plugging the City.

What follows is the text of my recent segment on Shire Network News. Normally I don’t post these commentaries here, but I thought this one fit well with this blog. And if you want to hear it, click on the link above. (Disclaimer: The shows are sometimes rated PG-13 for some language from the host and other commentators.)

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!"

This just in: Religious texts are not universally revered.  Liberal ministers shocked.  From the AFP article:

Christians voiced anger and dismay Tuesday after a Bible, which was part of an exhibition inviting viewers to add their reflections, was defaced with offensive and foul-mouthed scrawl.

Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art has decided to put the Bible in a glass case after the exhibit, called Untitled 2009 and part of a show entitled Made In God’s Image, was vandalised.

Artist Jane Clarke, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church, asked visitors to annotate the Bible with stories and reflections, as a way of making it more inclusive.

But visitors to the gallery took the invitation a bit further than she had anticipated.

"This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all," wrote one person, while another described the Bible as "the biggest lie in human history" and a third wrote: "Mick Jagger and David Bowie belong in here."

The oh-so-easy point to make here — one made innumerable times on this podcast — is that if this were the Koran, then the phrase "voiced anger and dismay" could very likely be the mildest thing you’d read, especially if this took place in, say, Denmark, and included a few cartoons.  We’re repeating ourselves, but it’s worth repeating.

Now, Breibart.com has a link to other articles about the Metropolitan Community Church, and they are, unsurprisingly, a very liberal church.  I part ways with my SNN brethren and "sistren" on the issue of same-sex marriage.  I’m against it, and thus I am on the opposite side of the debate from Metropolitan as well.  They have, in my opinion, ignored what the Bible says on the subject of homosexuality.  And so it comes as no surprise to me, frankly, that the general public around the Metropolitan doesn’t take the Bible seriously; the Metropolitan doesn’t.  Thus this church may actually be having an effect on their community, though likely not in the way they planned.  Its irony in motion.

In addition, the display was rather self-serving.  Clarke said, "Writing our names in the margins of a Bible was to show how we have been marginalised by many Christian churches, and also our desire to be included in God’s love."  Oh please!  What do you mean by "marginalized"?  Thieves, murderers, guys who cheat on their golf scores and, yes, homosexuals are welcome in any church.  No one’s being marginalized.  Ya’ wanna’ come to Jesus?  Then come on down.  Ya’ just wanna’ find out what this whole "Christianity" thing is?  Pull up a pew and we’ll let you know.  Ya’ wanna’ be coddled and told you’re not really doing anything wrong?  Wellll, that’s not going to happen because we all do things wrong, and it would be lying to tell you otherwise, and that would also be wrong.  (Can I have an "Amen"?)

I would hope that the folks running the Metropolitan believes that theft is a sin.  If they do, then saying so is no more marginalizing thieves than saying what my church believes about homosexuality marginalizes gays.  We’re both doing the same thing, so this "holier-than-thou" attitude, so often attributed to conservative churches, seems to have a nice enough home at Metropolitan.  Irony is now becoming rampant.

Finally, this "desire to be included in God’s love" that Clarke mentioned is, for someone who knows their Bible, a given.  How well she knows it is her business (though she is a minister, the church’s former pastor), but here’s a quick refresher.  Most folks, churched or not, know the line, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."  This is Jesus standing with an adulterer and against some religious leaders.  Without asking, she’s already included in God’s love.  No need for liner notes with her name, no parades, no fanfare; it’s there.  Clarke’s own words seem to call that guarantee into question.  There’s no reason why her community would think any differently. Instead of salt and light, it sounds to me like the Metropolitan is presenting bland shades of gray.

Oh, and by the way, there is another line in that same Bible story that isn’t repeated as often as the "first stone" line.  The last thing Jesus says to here is, "Go and sin no more."  Can you believe it?  By calling what she did a "sin", He was marginalizing her!  Consider this!

Growing up in the North, school never started until after Labor Day.  Living now in the South, it comes much earlier.  Today is the first day of school for most districts around metro Atlanta, and I have 2 in high school; one a freshman and one a junior.  For the freshman, it’s his first day of public school, and he’s looking forward to it.  All our kids have been home schooled through 8th grade.

One reason (of many) that we do this, relates to this article talking about Delaware schools.  It repeats a statistic that I’ve highlighted in the past, and think now is as good a time as any to repeat it.

Across the country, it was estimated in 2003 that nearly 10 percent of American students — or more than 4.5 million — were targets of sexual harassment or abuse by a public school employee between kindergarten and 12th grade, according to a study by former Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft.

The study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, said those numbers could be low because inappropriate behavior by educators is likely under-reported, Shakeshaft wrote.

Emphasis mine, as I emphasize them again.  Know your school district.  Home schooling is always an option.

1. The freedom of letting go.
2. Anti-semetic and philosemetic and some 19th century literature.
3. There will be a second round. Jah, we knew that.
4. Concerning a particularly useful invention.
5. On SSM.
6. Bitter-sweet customs.
7. What is democracy … a global view.
8. A ghastly city, perhaps that will put an end to romanticising the native American culture.
9. An early road map.
10. This sort of begs an important question. How do people think they can do climate prediction if solar output varys and we don’t understand how or why?
11. He may “have a point”, just not the one you think he has. When you read, “The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition.” I think one could transplant objections and responses to objections over the Iraq war directly into this sentiment. Yet, I figure few on the left thought their objections were “cynical efforts to gain partisan political advantage”. There’s a lesson here.
12. In that line of thought, an exercise for the left. Replace the words “Obama” with “Bush” in this article and what would be your response.
13. If this idea becomes the norm, will publishing in a “reject” journal satisfy degree requirements?
14. This notion on healthcare that everyone without insurance wants it that way is problematic.
15. Where the left’s version of the birther inanity is showing up.
16. Syriac study resources.
17. Religion and Egypt.
18. On Darwin and ideas.

A few weeks ago I posted several versions of an essay on Faith and Science, this is the start of another (which unlike the first has no “target” for publication). I may return and extend and refine it, but I have no definite plans to do so. In part that depends on whether this attempt engenders any response. In the spirituality class I am taking we read a number of St. Ephrem’s hymns “On Virginity” from the CWS collection. A few of these in the series concentrate not on virginity but St. Ephrem uses oil (olive) to indicate a “type” of Christ. In Syriac apparently oil, Messiah, and Anointing all come from the same root word, which is not the case with English (or Greek apparently). St. Ephrem also then lists a number of properties of oil, used in cooking, healing, for light and so on and illustrates how, because Christ does the same, that oil is a “type” reflecting and illuminating our understanding of Christ. This hymn thereby becomes a way in which common practice (contact with oil) in daily life can be uses to remind oneself, a trigger for reflections, and in general a way of connecting one’s daily life with one’s theological practice and belief. It can be noted that the common features and uses of oil come from the science and practices of the day.

So it might be an interesting project to do the same with modern science. Light was a common type of Christ in the days of St. Ephrem and the theological writers of late antiquity. Today, in late modernity, we can add to thse typological constructions. Today we might add things like the following:

1. Light is simultaneously without confusing both particle and wave. Likewise, Christ was man and God.
2. Light illuminating an atom can stimulates it to a higher state. Again Christ’s actions in a man’s heart can stimulate it to seek (and attain) for higher things.
3. This same light, further illuminating a population of exited (previously stimulated) atoms can cause the creation of more light, i.e., lasers. Atoms acting in concert, a type of “communion” through Christ (the light) and by Christ in communion a type of Christ and the Eucharist.
4. Light exists in a sort of timeless fashion, particles travelling on null or light cones in Minkowski spacetimes interact with things “in time” yet for the massless particle no time passes.
5. Light through photosynthesis is the source from which oxygen and sugars comes into our world, that which we derive our very life depends. We similarly depend on Christ to “trample death by death” unlocking the gates of Hades.

That was the product of a just a few minutes reflection on light and modern scientific discoveries in a typological exercise. One could likely do similar exercises with our understanding of astrophysics, matter, the standard model and so on. So, here’s the question: Is science education so poor these days that these sorts of typological reflections are useless to the lay Christian? That is, in St. Ephrem’s day oil (of the olive) was in many ways akin to petroleum today, it was a linchpin of their economy. Olive oil then was used for light, food, health, lubrication and a myriad of other applications. It took no real specialized knowledge to understand this. People today have likely all heard of quantum mechanics (things have a wave/particle duality), that light excites atoms to higher states, that lasers exist, and even have heard via special relativity that time slows for fast moving objects and that via extrapolation coupled with remembering that nothing travels faster than light that perhaps time might essentially stop for objects travelling at the speed of light. So, there are two questions here. Is this sort of reflection (a) useful in helping people connect theological abstractions with things with which they are familiar and (b) perhaps have the further use of reducing what friction now exists between religion and science.

According to President Obama’s top counterterrorism official, we should no longer use the term "war on terror" to describe the struggle against jihadis.  Oops, sorry, John Brennan also said we’re not at war with jihadis either, since "jihad" is, "a legitimate term, ‘jihad,’ meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal".  No, this should just be called a "war with al Qaeda", because after all, they’re really the only jihadi terrorists that hate us. 

Oh, and World War II is to be renamed in all future textbooks as the "War Against Adolf Hitler, Personally".  Otherwise, it would sound like it took place everywhere and was against the whole country of Germany.  Well, and Italy, but the "War Against Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Personally" doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely.

And it’s not a global war either, says Johnny.  Just because al Qaeda operates in the Middle East and Africa, and attacked the US on its home soil, we don’t want to risk making it sound like they really are all over the place.  It’s an image thing, you know.  Control the message.

So my question is this; if this counterterrorism official says we’re not fighting terrorists, what does that say about his position as a … counterterrorism official?  Perhaps he’d just rather put up a sign over his door saying, "Mission Accomplished" and hit the golf course.

1. New non-lethal military tech.
2. Nazi accusations in the news. Pelosi and Rush.
3. On disgruntlement in town hall meetings from TMV.
4. Krugman and pesky facts.
5. Neo-nomenklatura.
6. For the transfiguration, words from St. Ephrem. A church too. One more.
7. A book on ID noted.
8. Mr Harris (on Collins) gets a good going over.
9. Bully for her.
10. Ghastly science fiction.
11. The administration changes some words, here are two suggestions it’s a bad idea, here and here.
12. Noting Mr Hughes passing.
13. Putin viewed from St. Petersburg.
14. Obama and Mr Stewart.
15. Well that didn’t work out like planned.
16. Cash for clunkers, one more way in which Mr Huxley proved prescient.
17. In which I link a Bill Maher quote.
18. Finally, go girl go.