Jan 28
To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost containing a quote about the current 'Nanny State' we live in. This appeared in the Heidelblog.
This whole quote is not about Christianity, it is about right-wing conservative politics that overstates the current situation. And we note who is the recipient mentioned in the alleged, big fat nanny state. It is only individual people. Such is incredulous considering that the primary recipients of government funds are private sector elites. Their handouts come in the form of gov't contracts, tax credits, and the subsidization of payrolls. But note that these wealthy elites are not mentioned by Conservatives when talking about the 'Nanny State.'
If only my fellow religiously conservative Christian Americans would read the history of the French Revolution and how the church that sides with wealth and power is viewed in the eyes of the people.
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January 29 or 30
To Brian Levie's comment of Jan 29 asking about both whether the non-religious basis for non-traditional marriages should override my right to oppose those marriages and under what circumstances would I support non-traditional marriages that were not same-sex marriages.
The presence or absence of religious beliefs of the practitioners of same-sex marriage is not the issue. What is the issue is the boundaries that should exist for those whose religious beliefs are at odds with the practices of others. That seems to be a 1st amendment question to me. In addition, one can defend traditional marriage without trying to use their beliefs to control the actions of others.
Regarding your second question, is the promise to abstain from procreation enough to allow the marriage? For example, suppose the best efforts of the couple, the wife becomes pregnant. Would we then be morally obliged to support an abortion in order for the couple to keep their promise? Such a promise is not consistent and the law can’t made for exceptions. In addition, as for your other questions, again, the law can’t be made for exceptions. In addition, it isn’t just the equal sharing of property when it comes to polyandry and polygamy, there will be an inequality in status that will naturally come from the relationships.
As for your lsat question, did you note the whole statement? In addition, should the law be based on an impossibility?
What you would like is to have society be compliant with the Christian definition of marriage. I would like that too. The difference between us is the means by which pursue that goal. What we also want to note is that when people make comparisons between same-sex marriage and other kinds of marriages, they are often revealing more about themselves than furthering the discussion.
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Feb 3
To Brian Levie and his comment on February 1 admonishing me to read his notes and claiming that I am either not interested in or am unable to defend my views. This was part of Denny Burk's blogpost on gay marriage as a political litmus test
I have been answering your comments. But the issue is more than just about marriage here. The issue is about how Christians want to share society with unbelievers. Do we want to share society as equals or do we want some privilege to determine society’s laws?
See, the place we want Christianity to have in society negates SOME of the absolutes we believe in. Is same-sex marriage wrong? Certainly it is. We have the scriptures to tell us that. But the Scriptures always rule over the Church, and not over society. The time when we want the Scriptures to rule over society this side of the 2nd coming is the time when we Christians are asking for some degree of rule over a society that is also made up of unbelievers. And, as far as I can tell, the Scriptures do not mandate that.
And if you want to go by natural law, realize that what we recognize as natural law is not recognized the same way universally. And homosexuality provides a significant example in that way. For while we look at the design from creation and believing in the God who gives laws, we will consider homosexuality to be against nature. But some unbelievers will point out the existence of homosexuality in the animal world and that it is a very use practice in that it curbs aggression within a species. So they will point out with some merit that that is an example of natural law.
See, we are sharing society with such people. How do we want to share it?
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost citing the work of Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus claiming that the free market system is the only way to solve poverty. This appeared in the Acton blog.
There are basic problems with this post. One problem is that poverty has always existed even in the economies employing free Market systems. In addition, one should want to distinguish economic systems that are driven more by empire than by the market. If we look at any great empire, we will find that its economy can produce a great abundance. But that great abundance has neither eliminated poverty within its own borders nor existed without relying on exploitation. And it is the exploitation of others that spreads poverty outside of its borders.
We might also want to consider that under Neoliberal Capitalism, we've had much more of a free market than under the Bretton-Woods system. However, under Neoliberal Capitalism, most wages per job in this country have stagnated. In the meantime, certain necessities have risen in cost. And not only do we have wage stagnation, we see a loss in middle class jobs due to offshoring and technological unemployment.
It seems that this post is more of an advertisement than a source for useful information. Why is that the case? It might be because this post was too enthusiastic in supporting a particular school of thought that its authors became unaware of the complexities involved in the working of an economy and the selectivity they employed to filter out inconvenient information.
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To Dylan Pahman and his blogpost, containing a video, about the importance of standing on one's own 2 feet. This appeared in the Acton blog.
Standing solely on one's own feet is something that can be done only when living on a deserted island. But once we add people to our world, we find that not only do none of us stand solely on our own feet, we choose to either contribute to or exploit others. Not all others mind you, but others for sure.
Perhaps it would be good for Merton, Marx, and the Dalai Lama to meet Martin, Martin Luther King Jr. that is. For King said the following:
What I’m saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.
***The above quote can be found at http://rajpatel.org/2010/01/18/martin-luther-king-we-are-not-interested-in-being-integrated-into-this-value-structure/
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
***The above quote can be found at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm
The essentials we can gather from the above is that we can neither be totally dependent on others nor totally independent from them. In addition, being thing-oriented rather than person-oriented poses a danger to all.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on why government money alone can't fix poor schools. This post used a video that described the horrors of an urban school district. This appeared in the Acton blog.
It is simple logic that tells why spending more money alone on education will not help schools in poor neighborhoods. It is because schools are not the only major player in a child's education. Home stability is. But in poor neighborhoods, home security is often a victim of the local economics. And in contrast to the past when there were factory type jobs close enough to these neighborhoods to work in, that is not the case anymore. Many low-skilled jobs pay poverty wages and there prevails a financial hopelessness. We need to remember that one of the major threats to a family are money issues.
And as for the corruption described regarding contracts with the private sector, we need to emphasize the private sector's role there as much as the public sector's role. And we need to mention that though it might be more extreme in degree, the presence of corruption is in every level of government. This is especially true with our military industrial complex and those overseeing our economy. In both places, there is a revolving door policy between those working in the public and private sectors. And many of the problems cited in the school contracts with those from the private sector can be seen in the contracts with our military industrial complex.
We should note that the primary motivation we celebrate in the Free Market economy is the same motivation that drives the corruption that exists in public contracts with those from the private sector. And the first way to address that is not to celebrate the primary motivation that drives our Free Market economy.
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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on why the Puritans were capitalists. This appeared in the Acton blog.
How logic works is that you don't create an absolute or even general rule based on a single example. That the Puritans couldn't make it using a collective system but could using a capitalist system may reflect as much, if not more, on the Puritans themselves as on the system they tried. We might also note about the Puritans was their intolerance of Quakers to the point of persecution and martyring them as well as their participation in the ethnic cleansing of the America's indigenous people.
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