Relocating To Elfland

A parting shot at Wright’s article (yes, I’m still thinking about it):

I’m pretty sure gays should have Islamophobia (something about sharia law), and I’m pretty sure a lot of Muslims have Homophobia (something about sharia law). So either we need to get the Muslims over sharia, or we need to get gays over their gayness, and it’s pretty clear where Wright would come down on this one. There just ain’t a “benign context” big enough to fit sharia.

I don’t know why I keep dignifying Robert Wright’s work with responses. I guess my reasoning is that, if he’s popular enough to get published in the Times, there must be some people out there who actually think his driveling qualifies as analysis, and my heart goes out to them.

Wright’s latest gush of twaddle, provocatively (if somewhat unoriginally) titled “Islamophobia and Homophobia,” asserts that we need to get over our phobia about Muslims, just as we have gotten over our phobia about gays, because if we don’t we are going to keep alienating Muslims, and alienating Muslims raises the risk of homegrown terrorism. Which, Allah help us, “could carry America into the abyss.” [Collective gasp.]

We have a constructive resource, however, in the progress we’ve made overcoming homophobia: “maybe the underlying dynamic is transplantable to the realm of inter-ethnic prejudice.”

Which, by the by, leaves me standing in uffish thought, for I can’t make head or tail of how concern about Muslims (adherents to a particular religion) equates to inter-ethnic prejudice (prejudice against those of a certain race). But be that as it may . . . .

When we explore the roots of our progress against homophobia, we discover that we’ve been able to “build bonds across social divides” just insofar as we’ve been delivered from “the power of intolerant scripture” and begun simply “getting to know people.” This getting-to-know-you thing is so potent – it has such power to move us to accept people, and in accepting them, to accept everything about them (gayness, Islamic beliefs, Christian fundamentalism [oops, strike that], or what have you) – that it can actually change the way we read our “intolerant scripture.” It helps us go back and read with fresh eyes: “if this broader tolerance requires ignoring or reinterpreting certain scriptures, so be it; the meaning of scripture is shaped by social relations.”

Well, hold on now. Let’s all settle down and breathe deeply before asking the question: “Could getting to know Muslims have the healing effect that knowing gay people has had?” The good news, says Wright, “is that bridging does seem to work across religious divides.” [Praise be!] It’s all a matter, he avers, “of bringing people into contact with the ‘other’ in a benign context. And it’s a matter of doing it fast, before the vicious circle takes hold, spawning appreciable homegrown terrorism and making fear of Muslims less irrational.”

‘kay. There you have it. Utopia on the other side of a group hug.

Yes, first question, there in the back. “Has this guy ever talked to a homegrown terrorist?” Don’t know; it seems unlikely. Next question. “Does he seriously think homegrown terrorists regard us as the enemy because they weren’t treated nicely on the playground?” Any other questions?

I have a few, actually. Does Wright realize that his group hug requires religious adherents to give up everything he regards as offensive before they get to be included in the hug? I assume, for instance, that no matter how much Wright gets to know a Christian fundamentalist or an Islamic militant – be the context never so benign – the warm fuzzies won’t permit him to accept such a person’s defining beliefs. It would be different, of course, if their defining thing were gayness.

Which leads to the question that vexes me every time I read Wright: Does he have any idea how boorish he sounds when he sneers at people who don’t happen to hold his insipid philosophical views? There are people in the cosmos – mirabile dictu – who don’t think they are competent to decide for themselves what is good or evil, and then to impose their gaseous emissions on the rest of humankind. They actually believe in the universal moral rule of a transcendent God, and regard departures from His truth and will, by anyone include themselves, as wickedness. (Not all, I might add, are prepared to blow up buildings over it.) One can say they’re all fools – dangerous ones, at that – who should be excluded from group hugs, but one should offer a more substantive reason than, “Well, those just aren’t people I can accept.” Otherwise, we have simply replaced the “power of intolerant scripture” with the tyranny of the benign.

I’m no economist, but the column by Paul Krugman in the Times today may be the most extraordinarily inane piece of analysis I have ever read. He seems sincerely to believe that yet-more-excessive government spending (?!) will actually stimulate the economy, whereupon (and not before) it will become safe for the government to start saving money. The best I could gather about the details of his theory is that the government can create jobs by spending, and put money back in people’s pockets by cutting healthcare costs. Very well, let us hypothesize that this succeeds. There is no mention of the fact that jobs created by government money must also be sustained by government money, so how does this help us ever get around to government saving? No mention, either, of the fact that, while reducing healthcare costs might perhaps put some money back in the consumer’s pocket, the whole point of economic stimulus is to get that money back out of the pocket and into the market, with the result that in a few years our consumer is broke again and – mirabile dictu – eager for a government bailout. We have created an economy premised on overspending, and now people like Krugman seriously think overspending by the government will stimulate consumers to overspend and the fruit will be a flourishing economy. Dare I say: blowing up a balloon-rabbit bigger and bigger never makes it a real rabbit. What’s missing in our economy is real value – hard assets instead of paper promises. We go on spending money we don’t have so we can possess things we don’t own, our government goes on spending money it doesn’t have so we can spend money we don’t have so we can possess things we don’t own – an admirable balloon, or it was before it started sagging. Thanks to Krugman for reminding Uncle Sam to puff again, with feeling.

Reading the latest development in the health care debate made me wonder if the establishment is really trying to lose, come November. I can’t confirm  whether this is an oft-used procedure, as Pelosi claims, but it may rank as the political gaffe of the decade to pull it out right now, on this issue. Way to reassure the voting public.

A recent ABC article reporting on the work of Satoshi Kanazawa has me a tad worked up. The reason, you will shortly discover, is that I am evolutionarily challenged and (understandably) defensive about it.

Bottom line, says Kanazawa, smart people tend to become liberals and atheists (rejecting religious values); and smart men tend to value relational fidelity (adopting family values), while this isn’t necessarily true for smart women (who have always had strong family values, and still do).

Dimwits like me, by contrast, tend to remain stuck in religious values; the males among us also remain “mildly polygamous,” while our females continue to value fidelity as they always have, and as their brighter female counterparts still do.

The data supporting all this is pretty thin, when you get right down to it. About 20,000 kids are interviewed in their teens, and again in their 20s, and lo! the smart ones have become more liberal, more atheistic, and . . . well, things are a bit fuzzier in their family values, because the smart guys are starting to value faithfulness, while the smart girls aren’t appreciably different from the dumb ones – they all want relationships that last. Hmmmm. . . . “The participants were all in their twenties, and ‘the findings from them [says Kanazawa] may or may not generalize to all Americans across generations.” You think??? I wonder what IQ it took to figure that one out.

Something else I don’t get (nota bene: I am not one of the bright ones): all of this is supposedly thrilling in view of evolution. Bright people, i.e., the evolutionarily advanced ones, have this cool capacity for things “evolutionarily novel.” For example, it’s so weird that smart kids eventually become liberals – they actually start to care about other people – because ordinarily in evolution it’s survival of the fitter. Those who remain stuck in uncaring conservatism, now, they make sense; they are evolutionarily predictable.

But (if I may) doesn’t this really change the rules in evolution? I mean, the whole idea of natural selection assumes certain adaptational patterns, most notably that features which make for higher survival and reproduction will gradually prevail over those that don’t. (I didn’t make this up; I got it from Jerry Coyne, who should know.) So is it really evidence of being “smarter” or “better” or “more advanced” that one takes care of other people at great cost to oneself? Couldn’t this be construed as evolutionary regress, or at best an anomaly (read: weird)?

Never mind, though. What really kills me about Kanazawa’s findings is that they are so atrociously sexist (perhaps that needn’t trouble him, being a man of science and all). “Higher intelligence,” we are told, “had no effect on the women’s [family] values.” So what happened here? How come the smart girls don’t have the capacity for evolutionary novelty in their family values? How come they haven’t been able to get beyond predictably faithful to “mildly polygamous,” while their male counterparts are moving from “mildly polygamous” to faithful? If girls are so evolutionarily predictable on this point, doesn’t that mean they are less evolutionarily advanced than the guys? (It can’t be an IQ problem, because we know they are smarter than the dumb girls.) But . . . bear with me here . . . wouldn’t that sort of undermine the whole point of Kanazawa’s findings? Wouldn’t that mean that evolutionary novelty and predictability have precisely nothing to do with one’s IQ?

I’m not bright enough to figure out if I should be insulted by this research. I am definitely bright enough to figure out how insulted I would be if I were a bright girl.

Whodathunk the ghost of Cornelius Van Til would ever haunt the New York Times Opinionator? Check this out from Stanley Fish, reviewing Steven Smith’s soon-to-be-released Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (which appears to be a must-read). A teaser from Fish: 

“While secular discourse, in the form of statistical analyses, controlled experiments and rational decision-trees, can yield banks of data that can then be subdivided and refined in more ways than we can count, it cannot tell us what that data means or what to do with it. No matter how much information you pile up and how sophisticated are the analytical operations you perform, you will never get one millimeter closer to the moment when you can move from the piled-up information to some lesson or imperative it points to; for it doesn’t point anywhere; it just sits there, inert and empty.” 

I was equally taken with Fish’s brief mention of “a form of intellectual/political apartheid known as the private/public distinction.” It reminded me what a mess dualism has made in the history of Western philosophy and theology. Think about it: 

In philosophy, the duality of idea and form, which we owe to the classical Greeks. We’re still trying to find a way to put these back together, especially post-Kant. 

In anthropology, the duality of soul (mind) and body. In the field of medicine alone, one wonders how different things might look if these were ever brought back into fruitful connection. Let us not even speak of the field of education. 

In social theory, the duality of religious (church) and secular (state, society). The one cares for all things “spiritual” (worship, and the fate of the soul); the other for all things social, tangible, and embodied (says Fish, “the business of everyday life – commerce, science, medicine, law, agriculture, education, foreign policy, etc.). The arrangement sits awkwardly, one must admit, with the biblical metaphors of salt, light, and leaven; but there are Christians who seem to believe God is happy with it.

Penetrating all of this, the eschatological duality of heaven (eternity) and earth (time). What doth earth matter? Of what value is the historical? We’re holding out for a harp, a cloud, and a crown. I could do without the cloud, myself, but my sanctification has proceeded only so far.

With a certain amount of horror I read today’s New York Times article on current revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Let me say first that anyone who reads this article also needs to listen to Part 1 of Volume 89 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, and read C. S. Lewis’ potent little piece (on a related topic), “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” found in God in the Dock. 

So much is unsettling in this article, it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, I would worry about the amount of guesswork involved in psychiatric diagnoses. Irritable, aggressive children, we are told, have often been misdiagnosed as having bipolar disorder, and treated with “powerful antipsychotic drugs, which have serious side effects, including metabolic changes.” (We draw a curtain of charity over the further comment: “there have been widespread reports that doctors promoting the diagnosis received consulting and speaking fees from the makers of the drugs.”) 

Well, I guess it’s a good thing they got this straightened out in the new edition of the DSMMD, because that all sounds rather cruel. But I’m not sure what to think when the alternative diagnosis is “temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria.” Do they have a drug for this? Does it involve metabolic changes? Forgive me for speaking outside my field, but is it possible – just possible – that Johnny’s problem is . . . well, not so much biological as attitudinal; that maybe what he needs is not a drug but a switch to the behind? Or is someone seriously going to tell me the switch is abusive while these “powerful antipsychotic drugs” are marvelously humane? We would never inflict pain on Johnny; by the time we’ve finished doping him, he can’t feel any. 

But the really chilling stuff lies deeper than this. The DSMMD proceeds on the assumption – and make no mistake, it is an assumption – that all human emotions and behaviors are variations on brain chemistry, pure and simple. There are no spiritual, indeed no metaphysical, realities in play in the human psyche at all; everything is a matter of strictly material biology. 

But when you think about it, where does this leave us? In the first place, all moral responsibility is out the window. There’s nothing morally wrong about John Doe’s beating his wife; it’s just a manifestation of some pathology. Johnny can’t be held responsible for his disobedience and his temper tantrums; he needs treatment. 

Okay, but let’s take this materialistic view of things a step further. Under the old moral way of thinking about humans, there were meaningful distinctions between “good” and “bad” behavior, between behavior that is in bounds and behavior that is out of bounds. Hitting one’s mother in a fit of rage, for example, was simply wrong, and Johnny would be punished for it, hugged and held, set back on his feet, and sent on his way again. But how, pray, can similar categorizations of emotion and behavior be justified when everything is just brain chemistry. What, precisely, makes one manifestation of brain chemistry “normal” or “better” than another? How do we know when the brain is “malfunctioning” and when it is clicking along nicely? 

Well, the answer to this must be – the experts will tell us. I couldn’t tell you, looking at my five year old, what’s going on with his brain chemistry. He looks pretty normal to me, but what do I know? I’m just a lowly father whom no pharmaceutical research company would think of hiring. 

So the experts – the people with long white coats and various postgraduate degrees – will tell us what is “normal” and “abnormal” human behavior (I don’t think they use terms such as “good” and “bad” anymore). Okay. But once they start talking, there are some real head-scratchers. For instance, they tell us “hypersexuality” is a mental disorder in which “a great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges; and in planning for and engaging in sexual behavior.” Hmmm. Does it make any difference if this “disorder” arises in the context of a happy marriage? Is the problem here really the quantity of sexual urges, or the object of those urges? On the old way of thinking about human psychology, sexual urges were to be regulated by love, chastity, and faithfulness, because these were considered virtues. But if sexual drive is just chemistry, I would have thought it chemistry of a very “normal” kind, and I’m not clear on why it should be regulated. Certainly it may flare up in ways we consider “unhealthy” (stalking a victim, for example), and in such cases bring on the drugs. 

Another head-scratcher: “binge eating disorder” is defined as “at least one binge a week for three months – eating platefuls of food, fast, and to the point of discomfort – accompanied by severe guilt and plunges in mood.” This is not normal overeating, mind you; it “involves much more loss of control, more distress, deeper feelings of guilt and unhappiness.” Here again the experts have lost me. We all overeat (they say). But if we feel deep guilt and unhappiness along with our overeating, this is a chemical malfunction. Well, most of us have told lies in our lifetime, too. It’s pretty normal. But what if I happen to feel deep guilt and unhappiness about my lying? Or what if I’m having sexual fantasies about my neighbor’s wife (not “hypersexual” fantasies, just normal and well-regulated ones)? If I feel distress about that, can you give me a drug? ‘Cause it’s no fun, and according to the experts it ain’t normal. 

A final question. Not to be conspiratorial or anything, but what happens if the “experts” end up on the payroll of, say, a really powerful political entity? Has it ever happened that people in high places have decided certain emotions, expressions, and behaviors are politically inconvenient or undesirable? Would it, could it ever happen that behaviors might be termed “abnormal” because they are against prevailing political interests? And could it happen (indistinct stories from the Iron Curtain days keep rolling around in my head) that those afflicted with such pathologies might be confined to institutions for treatment? Could this even be justified in terms of human “kindness”? Maybe I’m just paranoid. Bring on the . . . yes, that feels better. 

There’s some good news, at least. Some experts are working on a proposal to identify “risk syndromes,” meaning that if you appear even to be at risk for developing one of the syndromes in the DSMMD, you can be labeled and treated and cured. Now that’s a relief. I think I look like a candidate for psychosis. Pass the drugs, and bless you, doc.

I am a religious exclusivist. By which I mean, I think Jesus was serious when He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” My faith in Jesus of Nazareth compels me to believe there isn’t more than one path “up the mountain” to God, and there aren’t multiple maps showing the way. There is a single holy book of revelation from God: it’s called the Bible. If Christianity is right, every other religion is wrong. It’s a zero sum game. 

Now this is the sort of conviction that, if voiced in public, can drop one’s popularity ratings in a hurry. A few years back, in a speech at the University of Regensburg, the current pope drew tons of rotten tomatoes when he quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus as saying, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Silly pope! What was he thinking? This is no way to promote friendly dialogue among the faiths! But hold on . . . 

Fast-forward a bit to the furor over the Mohammed cartoons. I remember a flicker of amusement watching “progressives” try to tackle this one: “What are the Moslems so upset about? It’s just a cartoon.” “No, you dummy, it’s hate crime. You can’t do things like that with Mohammed.” “But what ever happened to free speech? Don’t we pillory religious stuff all the time?” “You really are a dummy. This is Mohammed we’re talking about.” I don’t know if Allah ever got his satisfaction on this one; but it was interesting watching post-9/11 liberals try to process religious intolerance from a favored quarter. Did the Moslems need to join Benedict in niceness education class. . . . 

Fast-forward again to Robert Wright’s 2009 work, The Evolution of God. The idea here seems to be that if God would just grow up, we could at last put the star, the cross, and the crescent on one ensign, and all live happily together as one Abrahamic family. You can read about it right here. 

And this is where I draw a line. The “progressive” elites think we religious zealots should all just get along. No, it’s stronger than that. They think we should actually join with each other, putting aside our divisive differences. Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome . . . whatever. It’s the 21st century. It’s high time for a joint website. 

What annoys me about this (which would also annoy any self-respecting Jew or Moslem) is that the hybrid religion our friends in the media have so patronizingly suggested would no longer be Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. Let me say it again: a blended religion would be the death of all the religions in the blender. But what in heaven’s name gives our progressive friends the right to tout their new religion as superior to ours, and to tell us (from their religious high ground) what we may and may not tolerate? They won’t tolerate exclusivity, that’s for sure: it’s juvenile. (We’re not talking here about killing infidels; we’re talking about even believing someone is an infidel.) Am I missing something? 

Brit Hume (who is almost as silly as Benedict) says Christianity offers something Buddhism does not. What?! He needs to get a copy of The Evolution of God. (In fairness, Ross Douthat at the New York Times did try to cut him some slack.) 

And then I read this in Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics (p. 1.247): 

“Only a religious person is able to study and evaluate religious phenomena in their actual significance. It is not enough after all for the student of the science of religion simply to observe; he or she must introduce order into the chaos of phenomena, determine the place and value of the different religions, trace the life and growth and hence also the degeneration and adulteration of religion, and indicate where religion displays itself in its purest form and richest development. None of this is possible unless the practitioners of the science of religion bring along a standard that they apply to the various religious phenomena.”

The last sentence says it all. By whose authority did the “progressive” standard get its authority?