Good Ideas, Good Books



[via Dwindling in Unbelief, in this post]

Lying about Santa: The Irrelevance of Proof to the Holiday Spirit

[via Religion Dispatches]

Deeper Flavors of Diversity

"Many waters cannot quench love," I pondered Solomon's words sitting on a dusty porch in West Africa, the afternoon downpour pounding on the tin roof over my head. "But they certainly do a good job trying to drown it."

....Loving across cultures means that both sides release their grip on familiarity in order to experience deeper flavors of diversity.

While many waters could not quench our love, their rough waves have certainly smoothed our rough edges. In all of these ways, we embrace our own culture while keeping our arms open to the other.

[via The Link Between, HT: a comment from this post]

Your Future Has Detail

and

The Lens That Sees Its Flaws

[via Overcoming Bias]

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach

[via Kruse Kronicle]

Presumption of Innocence

This is something we've been talking about here quite a bit recently: the presumption of good faith.

That presumption, like the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" in our legal system, is terribly important for civil society and democracy. If we start, instead, with a presumption of bad faith, then we will be unable to discuss the things about which we disagree. If we can't talk, then we can only fight -- with bullets or ballots.

The presumption of good faith is sometimes referred to as the presumption of charity -- a reference to the cardinal virtue, love. But it's also an expression of a different virtue: justice. It is unjust, unfair to presume before-the-fact that those who disagree with you have evil intent. This, again, is why we have a similar principle -- innocent until proven guilty -- in our justice system. Justice demands a presumption of innocence.

But note that this presumption of innocence in our justice system does not mean that no one is ever convicted of a crime. The standard is innocent until proven guilty. Prosecutors do not violate the presumption of innocence when they produce evidence and testimony proving that a suspect is guilty of a crime. Such evidence can lead to a conviction, the conclusion, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the suspect is not innocent.

Convictions based on evidence do not violate the presumption of innocence....

Imagine there arises a health-craze for a new children's vitamin supplement containing large amounts of lead. Your friend has begun buying this supplement for his kids, and you have pleaded with him to stop. It's entirely possible, in this scenario, that you are both acting out of good faith, with the purest of motives. You both want what is best, and healthiest, for the children. Because you are friends, you are able to set aside bias and suspicion and the presumption of bad faith and you are able to discuss the evidence, the facts of the matter: lead is poisonous. In such a scenario, you would be able to persuade your friend not to poison the children with the lead supplements.

When talking to your next-door neighbor, however, you do not have this same basis of friendship and so your attempt at conversation quickly devolves into a shouting match in which each of you is presuming bad faith, bad motives. Your neighbor wants what is best for his children, so he insists that, as the ad says, they "Start the day the heavy, healthy way with new Pb for Kids!" He takes your disagreement with this practice to mean that you, for some twisted reason, don't want his kids to benefit from the best that medical science has to offer. This accusation leads you, unfortunately, to accuse him of wanting to poison his children, an approach that fails to persuade him. Eventually, you calm down and try to explain that lead is dangerous, but he's no longer listening. You may think lead is poisonous, but you also think he hates his children, and he knows you're wrong about that, so why should he listen to you?

The presumption of bad faith is a distraction from a consideration of the facts. And, because an invalid accusation of bad motive undermines your credibility, it prohibits the consideration of the facts.

[via slacktivist]

Theology Smack-Down: Andrew Sullivan vs. Sam Harris

[via I am a Christian Too]

A Sinner's Dilemma?

One of the least fruitful dead-ends in any online discussion forum is the Eternally Refined Analogy.

Someone attempts to illustrate their argument with an analogy which, being only an analogy, is not perfectly equivalent to the gist of what they're trying to say. And with startling speed, the original matter of the argument is abandoned and the conversation becomes primarily about criticism and refinement of the analogy.

Part of the reason I've never been particularly fascinated with game theory is that it reminds me of this phenomenon. It seems a bit too much like one big round of the Eternally Refined Analogy....

I spent those years serving the Queen of the Sciences, and theology hasn't warmed up to game theory. (From what I've read of the Summa, though, I'd bet Thomas Aquinas would've loved it).

It's difficult for theologians to hear the intricately refined scenarios posed by game theorists without hearing the unspoken preface, "And behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him." So if presented with something like the prisoner's dilemma, a theologian is likely to respond with something like, "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves ..."

But, unlike Jesus, I'm going to try to provide a straight answer here and describe three different theological objections to the prisoner's dilemma.

{read the rest...}

[via slacktivist]

Already Extended

We in the West pride ourselves that our removal of faith from the public sphere has delivered us from so-called "sectarian" violence that bloodied Europe in the 17th century. The language of faith is assigned to a private, irrational (i.e. subjective) sphere....

If religion enters the public realm, so we imagine, the result will be conflict, if not violence. The outburst that followed Benedict's lecture seems a case in point. Such rage not only horrifies us, but strikes us as deeply irrational. We cannot make sense of it. And we pride ourselves that we have chosen more wisely than the Islamic world. We are free to have or not have our own religion, the reasoning goes, as long as we keep it to ourselves....

Even more, we can add, it becomes easy to condemn irrational sectarian violence while imagining our violence is rational -- and unfortunately necessary to stop their violence.

We have long since passed the time when "the West" and Christianity were in any meaningful sense synonymous. The danger for us who follow Jesus is not that some coming Islamic tide will flood the Western world and "break the Cross" as one website put it. What threatens the followers of Jesus in North America and Western Europe is that we have so accommodated ourselves to the world around us that we have no distinctive alternative by which to understand or to address the challenges facing us.

One such alternative might be the Pope's assertion that peacemaking is the most profoundly rational course of action to follow, because at its heart is the peace that God in Christ has already extended to the world.

from "What the Pope really said by Beth Newman, emphasis mine

[via abpnews.com, HT: Jesus Politics]