The Vanderbilt Chaplain Controversy

A very large minority of elders and deacons of the Tennessee Conference obtained their theological degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School. I am one of them. Although the school has no denominational affiliation, it was originally founded as a Methodist seminary. Vanderbilt University was founded as a Methodist-affiliated college. Those bonds were severed in 1915 (if I recall correctly), but the Methodist influence on the Div School remains strong, and vice-versa. The Div School has an endowed chair of Methodist studies, for example, presently held by Dr. Doug Meeks, a scholar of the first rank. About a third of the students of the Div School are Methodist and UM hymnals are used in worship services held there. So there remains a very strong tie between the school and Methodism, especially Tennessee Methodism.

As an alumnus of Vanderbilt Divinity School, I know that the university generally and its religion departments specifically fully embrace conceptually and practically gay rights. This is a very strong institutional value of the university.

So what are we alums to make of Awadh Binhazim, a Vanderbilt Muslim chaplain, who stated at a public forum late last month what those of us who study Islamic law, sharia, already: that Islam calls for the execution of homosexuals. This is explicit in the hadith, the oral traditions of the words and deeds of Muhammed that were finally set to text. Binhazim's confirmation of this fact is not objectionable since any reader can read it plainly. The controversy at Vanderbilt springs from the fact that Binhazim went on to say, when asked, that as a Muslim he agreed: "I don’t have a choice as a Muslim to accept or reject teachings."

The video:



Here is Vanderbilt's official position on the controversy:

A recent forum at Vanderbilt University has generated questions about the university's stances on discrimination and free speech.

The "Common Ground: Being Muslim in the Military" event on Jan. 25 was part of Project Dialogue, a series at Vanderbilt dedicated to bringing diverse viewpoints to campus. It featured Awadh A. Binhazim, Muslim chaplain at Vanderbilt, and Army Reserve officer Capt. Darryl A Cox discussing issues military leaders face as they encounter and lead soldiers with Islamic beliefs.

During the question-and-answer session that followed the presentation, a student asked Binhazim about Islamic law and homosexuality. Binhazim answered the question with his interpretation of an Islamic law.

For clarification, Vanderbilt strives to bring many points of view on the issues of the day to campus for examination and discussion. This is the purpose of Project Dialogue.

No view expressed at a Project Dialogue or similar campus forum should be construed as being endorsed by Vanderbilt. The university is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas. It is the belief of the university community that free discussion of ideas can lead to resolution and reconciliation.

Vanderbilt is committed to free speech. It is equally committed to a policy of non-discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin or sexuality.

There has been some confusion as to Binhazim's role at Vanderbilt. He is the Muslim chaplain at Vanderbilt, a volunteer position. He is not a professor of Islam and is not associated with Vanderbilt University Divinity School. He has adjunct associate professor status at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in pathology. This position, which carries no teaching or research responsibilities, is also unpaid.

I cannot even imagine a Christian (or Jewish) chaplain saying gays should be executed. According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the only reference in the Jewish-Christian Bible prescribing death for homosexual acts is Leviticus 20:13. However,

Over the last few centuries, most Christians and Jews have rejected Leviticus 20:13. They no longer call on the death penalty for homosexuals. Only Christian Reconstructionists and a few Christian hate groups wish to revert to mass executions of gays and lesbians today.

Which is true. But I absolutely guarantee that the university would fire a Christian chaplain who denounced homosexuality as merely abominable. However, execution of homosexuals is a fact in Islamist countries, especially Iran. The photo at right is from the hanging of two teen-aged boys in the Islamic Republic in 2006. The Washington Post reported it was one of a series of photos.

The pictures show a dismally sad drama: Two young men, identified by the Associated Press as aged 16 and 18, are seen shackled in a prison van, sobbing; one of them is then seen being led to a scaffold; other shots show the boys together with dark-hooded men placing nooses around the boys' necks; and two final images show their bodies hanging from ropes, in a large public square, as a crowd watches from a distance.

What Chaplain Binhazim said was that this hanging, and countless others in Iran and other Islamic countries, was dictated by the basic tenets of Islam and that he agrees with those tenets. Hence, these executions are right and proper and unobjectionable.

You may recall that when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University in 2007, he said there are no homosexuals in Iran. Now we know why. He has them killed.

Let me be clear of my own position here. Asked a straightforward question, Mr. Binhazim gave an equally straightforward answer: This is what Islam says and I am bound by the tenets of Islam to accept it. I personally do not think he should be disciplined or fired for answering the question, even as bluntly as he did.

But there is not the slightest doubt in my Vanderbilt-alumnus mind that a Christian chaplain would indeed be disciplined by the university. So what Vanderbilt will do now is something of a defining question for the school. It prides itself on being tolerant and inclusive. Well, let's see just how tolerant and for what it shall be.

The whole forum lasted about 80 minutes. The co-speaker, Army Reserve Capt. Cox, is a Muslim convert. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, testified to Congress this week that the Defense Dept.'s "don't ask, don't tell" policy should be revoked and that gays should be allowed to serve openly. A good question for Capt. Cox would be, "As a Muslim officer, do you accept Islam's doctrine that homosexuality is an abomination?" There is no possible answer for him but yes, since textual literalism is a basic tenet of Islam. Then, "If you were directed by your superior commanders to participate in and publicly support a gay rights event, similar to such events already held by the military for ethnic minorities, would you comply?"

The entire forum may be viewed in eight parts starting here. Related coverage from Vanderbilt's campus newspaper:

Sparks fly at presentation on Muslims in the military

Vanderbilt 'Muslims in the Military' event goes viral

Finally, speaking of things Vanderbilti, Gen. David Petraeus will "engage in an open dialogue at Vanderbilt University about his actions as commander of the surge in Iraq and the role of U.S. forces overseas" at the university on March 1 (link). The event will be streamed live.

Update: comments turned on - please read comments policy.

So many of us have been there

No commentary needed.

Five Jewish Women

The Gospel of Matthew 1:1-6, 18
1 A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram,
4 Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,
6 and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife. . . .
18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.


Matthew begins his gospel with the Jewish genealogy of Jesus. Unlike Luke’s genealogy, which traces Jesus’ ancestry all the way back to Adam, Matthew stops at Abraham. Also, only Matthew mentions any women in Jesus ancestry. Besides Mary, there are four. They are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.

Let’s hear the story of each of these women.

Tamar’s Story

My name is Tamar . My story is told in Genesis, chapter 38. I was widowed at a young age when my husband, Er, died. He was a wicked man, so the Lord shortened his life. Er’s father, Judah, told Er’s brother Onan to lie with me so that I could have a child to inherit Er’s estate. But Onan didn’t want to father a child who wouldn’t be his own, so he didn’t carry through with his duty. Not long afterward, Onan died. We think he died because he did not carry out his responsibilities, which was wrong in the eyes of the Lord.

Judah then said to me, “Live as a widow in my house until my young son Shelah grows up.” So I went to live in Judah’s house. After a long time Judah’s wife died. When Judah had recovered from his grief, he went to Timnah, to the men who were shearing his sheep.

When someone in the household told me Judah was on his way to Timnah to shear his sheep, I took off my widow’s clothes. I covered myself with a veil to disguise myself, and went to the village of Enaim. Enaim is on the road to Timnah.

You see, Judah’s third son, Shelah, had now grown up. But Judah had not given me to him as his wife. Without a husband and children, I would be destitute in my old age. No one would be obligated to care for me. Everyone knew it was a terrible fate for a woman to grow old alone.

When Judah saw me, he didn’t recognize me because of the veil I was wearing. In fact, he thought I was a prostitute. Not realizing that I was his daughter-in-law, he went over to me by the roadside and said, “Come now, let me sleep with you.” “And what will you give me to sleep with you?” I asked.

“I’ll send you a young goat from my flock,” he said. I replied, “I want something as collateral for your payment until it arrives.”
Judah said, “What collateral should I give you?”

I answered, “Your seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand.” That would be something like your modern drivers’s license and house keys. So Judah gave them to me and he slept with me. As the result, I became pregnant by him.

After I left, I took off the veil, put on my widow’s clothes again, and went home. Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by a friend in order to get his collateral back, but of course, he did not find me.

About three months later someone told Judah, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar is guilty of prostitution, and as a result she is now pregnant.” Judah said, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!”

As I was being brought out to be burned, I sent the collateral to Judah with the message, “I am pregnant by the man who owns these. See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.”

Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” He never slept with me again.
When the time came for me to give birth, we discovered I would have twins. As I was giving birth, one of the twins put out his hand; so the midwife took a scarlet thread and tied it on his wrist and said, “This one came out first.”

But when he drew back his hand, his brother came out, and she said, “So this is how you have broken out!” And he was named Perez.
Then his brother, who had the scarlet thread on his wrist, came out and he was given the name Zerah.

Perez, the firstborn of Tamar, was the father of Hezron. Hezron was the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon. Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. . . .

No Christmas Kindle

The idea of reading eBooks appeals to me because I am out of library space in my home. I could buy another bookshelf but there is really no place to put it. Earlier this month my older brother received a Kindle for his birthday. I haven't seen it yet, but he described its utility to me a some length on a phone call. My wife had already asked whether I might want a Kindle for Christmas -- she's tired of finding books I am reading laying around; I might have a different book for most rooms in the house. I have no problem following three or four books at one time so I just leave one in the den, another in the living room, one in my home office and one ... well, somewhere else.

So eBooking has a certain attraction. I can have many different books on the electronic reader with the Kindle keeping track of which page I am on in each. But would the Kindle be right for me? I scoped the reviews of the three main readers and pretty quickly rejected the Sony eReader. Reviews said it wasn't near up to the Kindle's snuff.

But Barnes & Noble has a new e-reader called the Nook that reviewers say is kicking the Kindle's pedestal and maybe knocking it over. I'm not getting a Nook, either, but I think its feature set is superior to the Kindle's.

Kindle and Nook both have a free reader for both PCs and Macs. I installed both vendors' downloads and the readers are very good. Although a notebook computer's screen is not the e-ink used by the two e-readers, the typeface and clarity of the PC readers' display was superior to that of most web pages.

Both Amazon and B&N also offer a free e-reader download for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I downloaded B&N's reader onto my son's Touch (with permission), downloaded a free book and was very impressed again with the clarity of the display the readability. Obviously, not as much text per screen, but a flick of the finger from right to left turns the page with the silky smoothness Apple has perfected for its handhelds.

But wait, there's more! B&N also has a free e-reader for Blackberry. (Amazon's is "coming soon.") So I installed it onto my Tour. I was surprised again at how well the text displayed. A press of the trackball turns the page instantly. Because the Tour's screen is so small (but thankfully hi-res) I pressed the trackball a lot to get through the first chapter of Dracula -- it was 96 screens long!

Once a book is added to your accounts library at either vendor, you can download it to any device registered on the account with no additional charge. So I can read Dracula on either my computer or my Blackberry. The Kindle even lets you sync between the Kindle and your computer so that if you stop reading a book on page 75 on the Kindle, you can pick it up right there on the computer. I didn't see this feature on B&N's site for the Nook.

However, neither a Nook nor a Kindle will be under the tree for me this month. Their drawback is that they are single-purpose devices. Reading books or mags is all you can do with either of them. (They also will play sound files of various sorts.) Frankly, at $259 and $249 respectively, they are just too limited in capability for the price.

For $10 more than the Nook I can get a 32gb iPod Touch from Amazon, download both the Kindle and Nook's readers to it free, and read away with great ease. I can buy books from both vendors rather than be limited to the vertical-only vending for either device. And the Touch will do a lot more than serve as an e-reader. (I'd get an iPhone but am slaved to Verizon, besides, AT&T's 3G coverage ends 40 miles from my home.) The Touch's wi-fi works for full web browsing. The Kindle does not have wi-fi. The Nook does, but only for downloading eBooks, not for browsing. (Both the Kindle and the Nook download materials over a built-in cell phone connection no extra charge.)

The Touch will store and play music, of course, as do the e-readers, and also movies. There is a ginormous library of apps, including Documents to Go for word processing and office software functions. And I can watch TV on it with my Slingbox. In short, the Touch is not as good a reader than either the Kindle or the Nook, mainly because of screen size, but has so much more total capability for basically the same money that I can't make sense of getting either the Kindle or the Nook.





Endnotes: Here's a hands-on review of the Nook that generally agrees with my impressions, although I have never touched one. One thing the review points out is that despite the overall size of both Kindle and Nook, the reading area of their screens is only about the size of a 3 by 5 index card, which is not very much larger than the screen of a Touch or iPhone.

Of course, a book is a single-purpose device, too. Except there is no book on my shelf that I paid $249 for. I don't dispute that the Kindle and Nook are e-reader hedgehogs ("the hedgehog knows how to do only one thing, but it does it extremely well"). For me that is simply too much money to spend to read eBooks when there is a multi-purpose alternative that e-reads almost as well.

As for the optical advantages of e-ink, I'll not dispute it but OTOH, reading several chapters on my Blackberry didn't bother my eyes. Haven't tried it on the PC reader. Maybe the Blackberry's display, though backlit, is closer to e-ink than to my notebook PC's display, I dunno.

Bad clergy clothing

Let's see, what are the vestments the other clergy are wearing? If there was ever a site for "Glamour Don'ts" for clergy, this would be it.



Please, if I ever wear something like this, somebody just pick me up and carry me bodily out of the church.

Was Jesus really born to a virgin mother?

Matthew 1:18-25 makes this claim:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

The birth of Jesus of Nazareth to a virgin woman has been claimed by the Church from apostolic times, but it is today one of the most vexing claims about Christ that the Church grapples with.

I commend to your attention Tod Bolsinger's essay about the virgin birth. Among other things, Tod says that there was no expectation among first-century Jews that their Messiah would be born of a virgin. There is a passage in Isaiah in which the prophet is speaking to King Ahaz and tells the king,

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

The King James and many later versions quote Isaiah, "... a virgin is with child," but this is a retrojection of Church tradition onto the Hebrew text. The Hebrew word used is alma, which simply means "young woman" with no indication of her marital status or sexual experience. Some scholars think Isaiah was referring to his own wife when he spoke to Ahaz, others that he was simply laying out a timetable for when Ahaz's troubles would be over. (Isaiah continued that by the time the child could eat solid food and choose between good and bad, Judah's foreign-policy problems would be gone.)

Since the Jews of Jesus day could certainly read Hebrew - it was taught in the synagogues, even though they mostly spoke Aramaic - they would not have ascribed virginity to the young woman of Isaiah's prophecy. In fact, the face reading of the passage is self-evidently against it! So Tod is right that no one of the time expected the Messiah to be born of a virgin. In fact, they didn't expect the Messiah to be born of the Holy Spirit, either. What they did expect was for the Messiah to be a powerful political ruler and military leader who would usher in an eschatological peaceable kingdom for the Jews.

However, Matthew quotes Isaiah thus:

"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel"

Matthew, of course, was written in Greek, and the word used for virgin is parthenos, which indeed means "virgin." The reason Matthew reads that way is that in 70 BC Jewish scholars in Alexandria translated the Jewish Scriptures into Greek. Their result is called the Septuagint, for "seventy," because the story is that 70 scholars worked nonstop for 70 days to make the translation. This translation is abbreviated LXX (Roman numerals for 70) and it was from the LXX that Matthew cited Isaiah. And the LXX uses the word parthenos in Isaiah where the Hebrew text uses alma.

There was no lack of myths or legends in the ancient world of miraculous conceptions and births. But there are profound differences between them and the story of the birth of Jesus. In most of the other stories, the encounter between the human parent and the god (or goddess) is presented graphically, even explicitly. What happens between the woman and the god is exactly what ordinarily happens between an ordinary husband and wife. But in Matthew’s story as well as Luke’s, God is not shown in the male role in conception. The Holy Spirit, the divine power and presence, works in Mary to conceive a child without a human father. There is no union between God and Mary, either in Matthew or in Luke. Jesus comes to exist as an unborn child simply because God wills it, not from anything God does to Mary. This distinction is perhaps a crucial one for understanding who Jesus was.

Let’s recall, for example, the story of the famous figure of Greek mythology, Achilles. Achilles was the son of a human father and a divine mother. Achilles’ portrayal in the Iliad shows that he was half human, half divine. He had much of the power and invulnerability of the gods, but the temper and tempestuousness of ordinary people. He led his men with godly courage, but carried out unforgivably harsh vengeance on the Trojan prince, Hector. Throughout the story, the tragedy of Achilles unfolded precisely because he was neither wholly god nor wholly human. He was half and half, and neither half was at peace with the other. His godly side strove for the higher virtues, but was dragged down by his humanity, and his divinity perverted his humanity. Thus, the story of the semi-divine, semi-human Achilles is one of tragedy.

Jesus is nowhere presented as a hybrid product of divinity and humanity. Jesus is not a half-and-half person. Jesus is affirmed as fully human and fully God, and his story ends not in tragedy at the cross but in victory at the empty tomb.

Tod observes that the virgin birth of Christ

... is God’s way of personally entering his creation. The Spiritus Creator that brought the universe into being, personally entered creation to bring restoration. God did not choose a human being, imbue that person with his Spirit and stick him on the cross (that view is called “adoptionism”). God himself did the job. God did not just send his Spirit, God himself saved us, was with us…

Mark D. Roberts has a thoroughly read-worthy series on whether the doctrine of Jesus's virgin birth is hype or history. Also, many people confuse the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with the universal Christian doctrine of the birth of Jesus to the virgin Mary. But the are different ideas altogether.

The Immaculate Conception means that Mary, whose conception was brought about the normal way, was conceived without original sin or its stain - that’s what "immaculate" means: without stain. The essence of original sin consists in the deprivation of sanctifying grace, and its stain is a corrupt nature. Mary was preserved from these defects by God’s grace; from the first instant of her existence she was in the state of sanctifying grace and was free from the corrupt nature original sin brings.

However, this doctrine is exclusive to the Roman Catholic Church, having been promulgated only in 1854 by Pope Pius IX. Protestants have never worried about it.

Scientific deconstructionism

Eduardo Zorita, a researcher on past temperature trends at the Institute for Coastal Research in Germany, writes, 

... I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files. ...

These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.

Climate science is not primarily concerned with climate change. "Global warming" is on the whole a political movement, not a scientific discipline. Climate science has no "product." The outcomes of climate modeling cannot be used to do anything except what is being done with them - promote statist control of ever-expanding slices of national economies to conform to a transnationalist ideology. 

If climate science could be used to do anything else, it would already be happening. But have you ever heard of any report of climate science's findings not in connection with expanding the power of the state or trans-state organs?

Now if climate scientists find that their only paying customers are statist bureaucrats, and most of the scientists were taught beginning as undergraduates to believe that ideology, what do you think will be the result?

The result is that climate science will be subordinated to political goals. This is exactly what has happened, as more and more scientists working in the field are pointing out. What we are seeing, I think, is that linguistic deconstructionism has polluted its first scientific discipline. 

One of the basic tenets of postmodernist linguistic deconstructionism (which I learned how to do in my postgraduate studies at Vanderbilt) is that all text is tainted by bias and that objective points of view are impossible. Hence, the objective of expression is to exercise power. (Formerly the type of expression so designated has been confined, mostly, to those of history, literature and politics. But now even mathematics may be considered biased and subjective.)

Hence, there is no such as thing as objective truth and statements are never more than propositional in nature. A statement's truth content is never more than opinion, and opinions are nothing but expressions of power. Therefore, in a basic sense, all speech is power directed.

This is a fundamental world view of the Left and is derived directly from Marxism, as reworked by Leninism. Since Marx held that his communist theory was literally scientific, his economic-historical forecasts were not simply likely, they were certain. To understand and partner with this inevitability was to be "on the right side of history" (which is where that overused cliche comes from). As formulated by Lenin et. al., truth is therefore not statements of objective facts, but assertions that move the communist revolution and its fulfillment closer to reality. "Truth" is therefore pliable and impermanent, the concept of truth being only practical. In practice, all of language became subservient to the dominance of the party, a fact recognized by George Orwell in his novel 1984 and its concept of Newspeak. 

The Left's domination of the academy began in the humanities departments. The penetration of the Newspeak mentality into the sciences probably began with what we now call climate science. In fact, Earth Day founding in 1970 has Leftist roots, the original April 22 date not coincidentally being the birth date of Lenin himself. From the original "grassroots hippie" event, the whole of modern-day environmentalism was born. And environmentalism has never been freed from its Marxist-Leninist roots.

What this means is that when climate science became dominated by the Left (well, it began that way), then its purpose was not to determine scientific truth, but to use science to exercise political power. A standard Leftist critique of the West's standing values was that they were social constructions, not rooted in objective reality (which does not exist, anyway), but in class struggles. That was the Left's entree into the sciences, as Richard Rorty explained in AtlanticOnline, 

Starting with the claim that homosexuality, the Negro race, and womanliness are social constructions, they go on to suggest that quarks and genes probably are too. "Ideology" and "power," they say, have infiltrated sterile laboratories and lurk between the lines of arcane journals of mathematical physics. The very idea of scientific objectivity, they say, is self-deceptive and fraudulent.

If scientific objectivity is a fraudulent concept, it does not mean that science is of no value. It simply means that science is just another tool for the class struggle and that it can be used on the right side of history. Like any other expression, scientific expressions are therefore concerned not with facts but with power.

Power is the goal. When global warmists mount ad hominem attacks against skeptics, most of us see those attacks as tacit admissions of failure of the scientific argument. But the Left does not see them that way since the scientific argument is just a specialized form of power expression. Ad hominem attacks are, too, and so are just another tool in the toolbox of power plays. They are an attempt to change the terms of the battle (and battle it is.)

However, most of our country is not Leftists, far from it. We cannot let the Left set the terms of public debate. We have to keep hammering on the facts and that the Left has bent science to political power-play ends, and that environmentalism is a political movement, not a scientific discipline.

We need also to reject the idea that scientific expression is merely another way of expressing opinion. Although empiricism has its own difficulties, we need to recover a strong sense of a philosophy of science that undergirds science as relating to objective facts about nature. This does not mean that science has no social context, as NYU physicist Alan Sokal pointed out:

Science is a human endeavor, and like any other human endeavor it merits being subjected to rigorous social analysis. Which research problems count as important; how research funds are distributed; who gets prestige and power; what role scientific expertise plays in public-policy debates; in what form scientific knowledge becomes embodied in technology, and for whose benefit -- all these issues are strongly affected by political, economic and to some extent ideological considerations, as well as by the internal logic of scientific inquiry. They are thus fruitful subjects for empirical study by historians, sociologists, political scientists and economists.

The problem is that when the externals become dominant, then in a real sense it is not science that gets done, but something else dressed in scientific costume. There is a danger there that Sokal presciently pointed out 11 years ago: 

There is nothing wrong with research informed by a political commitment, as long as that commitment does not blind the researcher to inconvenient facts.

The real "Inconvenient Truth" about climate science is that it is mostly serving, rather than informing, a political agenda.

Why the "Great Faith Experiment?"

I explained in my November newsletter column (click here to read)that we are doing financial pledging for 2010 differently this year.

In this post I will try to explain why.

In years past, pledges were done in a very traditional way. Pledge packets were delivered or mailed to the households of the church, the people filled them in and brought them back. The church's financial stewards opened the pledges, totaled them up and reported the total to our bookkeeper and finance committee chairperson.

And that was that.

What many people of the church probably don't know is that the sum of the pledges received for the coming year did not affect the amount of the budget for that year. Each annual budgets is formed by committee chairpersons and activity chiefs making a request for funding to the finance committee, which as a whole considers the requests, puts together a draft budget and re-evaluates the submissions. Some requests are sent back for reconsideration and after additional analysis and discussion, a final budget is formulated. This budget is sent to the church council for final approval.

The reason the sum of pledges received did not affect the budget amount is because almost 90 percent of our budget consists of fixed costs that can't be adjusted based on nothing more than amount of pledges. The heating/cooling bill, for example, is what it is. Property insurance costs are what they are. The payroll is the payroll. (Salaries did not rise for 2010, by the way.) Those expenses must be paid; in a strict sense they are not budgeted, but estimated, for the coming year. Some estimates are precise but others are only approximations. But they will not vary whether the pledged sum is high or low.

Furthermore, the money budgeted for ministries of the church forms the core of what our church is all about. Although from a strict financial-accounting perspective these expenses are "discretionary," they really cannot be. If we fail to fund our ministries then we cease to be a church in any meaningful sense of the word.

So we of the finance committee asked ourselves in the last few months, "Why continue to do pledging the same old way?" After all, once the pledges were totaled, nothing more came of them. No one ever got a "bill" from the church nor did anyone compare a pledge's amount against the amount actually given. Furthermore, many people declined to render a pledge.

We concluded that continuing to do pledges that way was not well advised. And so the Great Faith Experiment was born. We will still pledge to support the work of the church financially, but our way of receiving pledges will recognize that giving is part of both worship and discipleship. In that regard, our pledges are promises made to God.

This Sunday is Commitment Sunday.

During each worship service there will be a time to come forward to lay your envelope, with the pledge sealed inside, on the altar as a gesture of solemn commitment to God and God’s work of redemption by our church.

Afterward, volunteers will collect the envelopes and pray for each person by name that God may grant each of us grace to remain faithful to the commitments we have made. Then they will mail the unopened envelope back to you. Please keep it and use it through the coming year to remind yourself of the promise you have made to God to support the work of his church.

A final note: the budget approved by the church council for 2010 amounts to $275,332, a decrease of $23,760 (-8.6%) from 2009.

Stress on Army families is great, too

In much of the commentary related to the tragic killings at Ft Hood, attention has been paid to the enormous stress soldiers endure while deployed to operational areas and the difficulties of adjusting to normal life upon return. And those stresses and difficulties are very real and serious.

But let's not forget the stresses of the family members soldiers leave behind. From "Army Live," the official blog of the US Army: "Not Wanting to Let Go"

I recently came across the above picture (which I am sure many of you have seen already) of Paige Bennethum standing in formation with her father, pleading with him not to leave. Her father, Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum was preparing to leave on a year -long deployment to Iraq.

Last week I attended the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition and had the opportunity to sit in on the Military Family Forums. On the final day, the topic for the forum focused on the effects of extended deployments on Soldiers, families and especially the children.

The Army psychiatrist, Col. Kris Peterson discussed with Army Spouses and support groups the seriousness of repeated, lengthy deployments and the effects they are having on children.

For example, he noted that yearly mental health visits for children under the age of 15 have increased from 800,000 in 2003 to 1.6 million in 2008. One out of three school-age children are at risk for psychological problems and about 30 percent of children have significantly increased anxiety.

In an effort to deal with that trend and provide a central place for Army children to get mental and physical help, Peterson and other experts at Madigan developed the Military Child and Adolescent Center of Excellence in Fort Lewis, Washington.

The team consists of pediatricians, psychologists, social workers and child and adolescent psychiatrists whom are looking at the latest research and strategically planning the way forward for caring for Army children in addition to sifting through existing programs to find what actually works.

Many times when we think about the U.S. Army we tend to focus just on the Soldiers. We must remember that there are children all over the country like Paige Bennethum whose father or mother is/will be deployed overseas for months at a time. These deployments obviously have a great effect on the children and that is why the U.S. Army is working hard to create and development programs and centers that will assist families through those difficult times.

Military families, we want to hear from you. Let us know what you think can be done to assist families in times of deployments. Children; share your stories of how you deal with a loved one being deployed.

The Overpopulation Myth, Part 1

Myth: We can't produce enough food to feed the people in the world today, much less in years to come.

Fact: The world today produces enough food to provide every person alive with an adequate daily diet, and there is more land still available for agriculture than is being used now.

In my sermon this morning, I said,

Beginning in earnest in 1968, we have been almost incessantly propagandized that the earth is overpopulated and that responsible adults will not have more than one child each, or better yet, one child per couple. 1968 was the year that Paul Ehrlich, an American specialist in butterflies (really) published a doom and gloom book called The Population Bomb. In it, Ehrlich predicted a catastrophic meltdown of the earth’s ability to support more than the three billion, five hundred fifty-six million people living at the time.

Ehrlich wrote,

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...

Ehrlich’s book was influential far beyond the credentials of its author or the phony science he used. The present world view that overpopulation is a ticking time bomb threatening to end in mass death derives directly from Ehrlich’s apocalyptic fairy tale.

The planet’s population is now six billion and climbing. Across the world, people are better nourished than ever before in all history. Hunger in the world today is caused by politics, not lack of food production. GlobalIssues.org lists the following causes of hunger in the world. I have asterisked (**) those that are purely or predominantly political:

• ** Land rights and ownership


• ** Diversion of land use to non-productive use


• ** Increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture


• ** Inefficient agricultural practices [there are also cultural, economic and educational issues with this one]


• ** War


• ** Famine


• Drought


• ** Over-fishing


• Poor crop yield


• ** Lack of democracy and rights

The majority of these causes are purely or predominantly political. Note that famine is actually not a root cause of chronic hunger, it is a description of local, enduring shortages of food. But famine's relief is not an arcane art. Shipments of food stocks from other countries to the famine area take care of the problem. But whether that humanitarian deed is done is a political decision.

Famine can also result from intentional political decision. The people of North Korea are the most enduringly malnourished people on earth. The reason is simple: North Korean communism cannot organize resources and labor to produce and distribute enough food to feed the people on the one hand, and on the other the ruling classes divert the country's resources to their own use, to arming the country and to cement their iron grip on the masses. If the people finally resort to cannibalism, well then, so be it.

The International Food Policy Institute says that even so about 20 percent of the world's population,

... are chronically undernourished ... [S]ince the mid-1970s the world has produced enough food to provide everyone with a minimally adequate diet. Hunger is one piece of a complex of interrelated social ills. It is linked intricately to global economic, political, and social power structures; modes of development and consumption; population dynamics; and social biases based on race, ethnicity, gender, and age. The world community has both the knowledge and the resources to eliminate hunger [emphasis added].

According to a report published this year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there are 1.4 billion hectares of land under farm production in the world today. "Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added" and most of that in Africa and South America (OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2009-2018, PDF). I have read some estimates that the amount of arable land in Africa alone could feed produce enough food to feed the whole world, although as a matter of practicality, that will obviously never be the case.

The point is that the amount of arable land used today can be more than doubled. Lack of food production is not the cause of hunger today and there is no reason it should be the cause in the many years to come.

Next: the real "population bomb" is not having enough children to secure our future.

Update: I thought about explaining in my sermon the new twist on Ehrlichean apocalypticism but simply didn't have time. The new twist goes like this from "the world is about to end" bunch:

1. Okay, we admit that we can produce enough food for all six billion of us, plus many billions more.

2. That doesn't matter because human beings are poisonous to the earth. They produce carbon dioxide!

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO² every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government's target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately.

That from the UK's Guardian newspaper. The piece ends,

Some scientists, the German chancellor's adviser, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber among them, say that if the cuts are not achieved, we will end up with a planet with a "carrying capacity" of just 1bn humans. If so, we need to start cutting back population now with methods that offer a humane choice – before it happens the hard way.

To which University of Wisconsin law Professor Ann Althouse responds, "Oh, great. Thanks for the warning about cutting back "population" the hard way, Germany."

This is not exactly a new idea in Europe. More than two years ago the K's TimesOnline ran a guest op-ed entitled, "The cry should go up in Europe: more babies, please." It includes this cheery thought:

And there is the hint – but just a hint – from the Optimum Population people that if voluntary restraints do not work, governments will bring in coercive measures. The example that springs to mind here is, of course, China and its compulsory one-child policy. I’ve come across some distinguished academics myself who wouldn’t dream of trying to impose coerced abortion here but have made it quite clear, in private conversation, that we should all be grateful on environmental grounds that it happens in China.

Last year, Dr. Freeman Dyson, one of the most respected physicists in the world, had a long essay in the New York Times Book Review in which he explained why environmentalism is now an actual religion in its own right. Mind you, in his mind this is a good thing. I'll post more about that later on.

"Why Jews Pray"

First Things has an essay by Rabbi Ben Greenberg, Orthodox Jewish Chaplain of Harvard University as well as the Orthodox Rabbi of Harvard Hillel, called, "Why Jews Pray."

Every moment that we stop and begin to move our lips in prayerful words towards God is a testament to the notion of purposeful creation. The basic ability to pray, to yearn for a connection to God, demonstrates the meaningfulness of life. Yet, this only explains a broad universalistic Jewish motivation for prayer. What lies at the core of Jewish prayer?

The question is answered, like most Jewish questions, with a debate. Maimonides (Laws of Prayer 1:1) argues that it is a commandment to pray to God everyday based on the verse “And you shall serve the Lord your God.” The service being referred to in this verse is none other than prayer as the sages in the Talmud (Tractate Taanit 2a) had already noted. However, for Nahmanides (Notes on the Book of Commandments, Positive Commandment 5), the commandment to pray applies only when the community is faced with great distress and then, in that moment, it is an imperative to affirm our belief in a God that listens to prayers and intervenes.

We are thus presented with two differing reasons for Jewish prayer. On the one hand, as expressed by Maimonides, praying daily is of fundamental importance. One can speculate a myriad of reasons why this would be so. On the other hand, however, prayer is only necessary when the community is faced with a tremendous difficulty and needs to turn to God and cry out for help in that very moment. ...

Maimonides, then, is in agreement with Nahmanides that meaningful prayer arises only when one is in a state of difficulty. But the difference lies in the application of difficulty to the circumstances of life. Nahmanides considers trouble to be something that can only manifests itself as a distinct and recognizable event, Maimonides, however, sees life itself as full of difficulty and burden. The very nature of what it means to be alive is one that is rife with existential strife and tension that necessitates daily prayer.

Not a long essay and well worth your time.

Some thoughts on health care

The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church declare, "Health care is a basic human right." The Principles offer the weakest of justification for the claim, citing only Psalm 146, which "speaks of the God 'who executes justice for the oppressed;/ who gives food to the hungry./ The LORD sets the prisoners free;/ the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.'" I have looked in vain online for a philosophical argument, as opposed to mere assertion, that health care is a human right. haven't found any yet, but I keep looking. However, here are some representative sample of the "pro" side that I have found so far.

As far as I can tell, when someone says that health care is a human right, what s/he really means is, "I want all the health care I want to be given to me free."

Amnesty International merely cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which lists health and health care (both) as human rights, and pretty much lets it go at that. But Amnesty offers no explanation of why health care is a right rather than, say, an achievement. It simply is a right, and that's that. Same for The Opportunity Agenda.

People's Weekly World is, as the name indicates, overtly Marxist, but let's see whether it can offer an actual argument in favor of the position. Umm, nope. It simply cites FDR's proposal of a Second Bill of Rights, which includes, "The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health," and let's it go at that.

Roosevelt did make an argument, albeit a very brief one, postulating that the original Bill of Rights, being oriented on political freedom, was no longer adequate for an industrial America. And yet his argument was only pragmatic, claiming that, "People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." Which is pretty interesting, seeing as how FDR once fancied himself a strongman ruler if not actual dictator (he actually drew up legislation for Congress to authorize him to rule by edict, but he never sent it to the Hill).

I think that history, however, would show that "people who are hungry and out of a job" bring down dictatorships as often as they enable them. Say, France, 1789 and the downfall of the French monarchy. It wasn't hunger that caused dictatorial rule to return later to France, but chaos. And again: Russia, 1917, the overthrow of the Czar and the establishment not of dictatorship but of proto-democracy, well, until the Bolsheviks got the upper hand. Germany: Hitler was not elected chancellor- twice! - by hungry, jobless Germans, though his elections in 1933 and 1936 did take place in the depression. It was improving prosperity in Germany, combined with runaway nationalism and anti-Judaism, that enabled the Nazis to consolidate their power. Nor did jobless, starving Japanese demand the bushido government that took them into World War 2, although starving Japanese in 1945 would almost certainly have overthrown that government in 1945 had it not surrendered to the Allies first.

However, FDR didn't stop at health care in his Second Bill of Rights. He listed all sorts of ingredients for his rainbow pie. For example, the right of every farmer "to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living." Growing plants is now a human right? How can there be a "right to sell" without a corresponding obligation for someone else to buy? And just how shall "decent living" be defined? All of FDR's Bill is chock-full of inexactitudes like these, such as, "The right of every family to a decent home." Just what does that mean?

Well, continuing to march: we turn to Ryan Dashek, writing in The Daily Cardinal, that, "Health care is a human right, not a costly luxury." Again, no explanation of why this is so, just assertion and a litany of presumed benefits that would come from nationalized, single-payer health care. Nor, for that matter, is there the slightest recognition that health care is going to be costly whether we classify it as a luxury or not. (The failure to distinguish between cost and price is very common among universalism advocates.)

Well, the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative lets the cat out of the bag.

When visiting a doctor, clinic or hospital, patients should not have to pay. Health care funds should be collected independent of the actual use of care, to avoid creating a barrier to care. Services must be provided based on clinical need, not payment, regardless of the financing mechanism used.

This is so economically uninformed that I hardly know where to begin its rebuttal. It treats medical care as a resource rather than a service. It absolutely makes the bean counters and accountants in charge, not doctors or patients because medical care is going to allocated somehow ("rationed," as we say) and the main important question is how it shall be done.

Contrary to what the NESRI thinks, access to medical care will never be unlimited. I have personal experience with government-run health care. It was a CHAMPUS-run clinic that opened in Fayetteville, NC, while I was stationed at Ft Bragg. (CHAMPUS was the military health-insurance program used when treatment at actual military facilities was not available. It's called Tricare today.) The object was to encourage family members of military members to use this clinic rather than go to the base hospital. The Army contracted with a civilian company to staff and run the clinic.

Being a contract, there was a dollar amount to pay for a specified number of patient treatments. The clinic was overutilized (or underfunded, take your pick). So the company, as allowed by the contract, reduced the number of days the clinic was open and the number of hours per day it was open. Otherwise, it would have continued on until say, the end of July, and then been shuttered until October.

Like Mr. Dashek, NESRI does not understand that price and cost are not the same. Making health care free for patients does nothing to reduce its cost. All it does is shift the small-minority costs to the provider that are presently borne by most, but not all of the patients. But the costs will neither disappear nor be reduced. It will still cost the doctors and hospitals the same to provide the care as before.

What "free" (in scare quotes because, you know, TANSTAAFL), health care will do is increase demand without increasing supply. That always leads to shortage whether we're talking about medical care, gasoline, hotel rooms or any other good or service. Without price movements to bring demand and supply back into alignment, reductions will follow in access to or quality of care or both.

Here's an illustration: I visit many hospitals and occasionally those visits are to emergency rooms. There is a sign in waiting and admission areas I have seen many area emergency rooms. It says something like this: If your illness or injury is not a true emergency, you will be directed to a routine-care facility.

Why that sign? Because federal law requires that emergency rooms cannot charge patients for treatment if the patient says he cannot pay or is uninsured. I don't object to the law, but emergency rooms have become choked with uninsured supplicants for free treatment who are not suffering a medical emergency. I have seen this many times in person over the years. But emergency rooms are called that for a reason, and if you fill your treatment bays with patients who, though ill or injured to some degree, are not facing an actual medical emergency, you are in fact decreasing access (rationing) care for true-emergency patients.

That's what happens when you make medical care free. It will always become over-demanded and under-resourced. Costs will rise and will not be recuperated by monetary price. Hence, price will be paid in other coin, and that coin will always include availability and quality.

Any economist understands this. Pity that so few others do.

Endnote: Philip Barlow, Consultant neurosurgeon at Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, explains why, "Health care is not a human right."

Philip Niles says that the real question is not whether health care is a human right, but "How much health care is a human right?" Good question, since health care is finite.