The Questioning Christian: We're helping with the Great Project

Revisiting Rawls: Time to raise the veil of ignorance

I used to think that a successful life was available to anyone in this country who was willing to work hard, and if someone didn't succeed, it was his- or her own fault for making bad choices. But over the years I've seen how not everyone gets dealt as good a hand as I was, starting with one's "choices" of parents and upbringing. I've also seen how sometimes basically-good people can experience disappointments and even disasters that seemed hardly their fault, if at all. "Suck it up and accept your fate" is not an especially-satisfying response — particularly since evolution has programmed all of us higher-order animals to want what we see that others have (arguably, such programming is largely responsible for all human progress).

I've come to appreciate the wisdom of John Rawls's "veil of ignorance" in his book A Theory of Justice: We should try to set up our basic societal arrangements as though we didn't know what "ticket" we'd be handed in life's lottery. One simple example is the kids' technique for sharing a big cookie: You cut, but then I choose (which goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis, as it turns out).  To quote the Wikipedia article: "For example, in the imaginary society, one might or might not be intelligent, rich, or born into a preferred class. Since one may occupy any position in the society once the veil is lifted, the device forces the parties to consider society from the perspective of all members, including the worst-off and best-off members." The same article notes that "if [slave-owners] were forced through the veil of ignorance to imagine that they themselves may be slaves, then suddenly slavery may no longer seem justifiable."

Original sin? How about unfinished natural selection?

Crispin Sartwell has a piece in the NY Times:  What's So Good About Original Sin?   He says, "I would like to entertain the notion that a secularized conception of original sin is plausible, and that believing it might have good effects. In short, perhaps it’s time for a new Puritanism, though with fewer witch trials this time around."

I wonder if this philosophy professor has any familiarity with evolutionary psychology. Yes, as Paul said in Romans, we do things we hate and we don't do things we want. But original sin seems a less plausible explanation than natural selection of variations.  To borrow from Jesse Jackson: In "his" continuing creation, God simply isn't finished with us yet.

 

"Am I a Christian?" Cardinal Tobin responds

Well said, Your Eminence:

[NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof:] "In previous Q. & A.’s, I asked [Presbyterian] Rev. Tim Keller and [Baptist] President Jimmy Carter whether a skeptic like myself, who admires Jesus’ moral teachings but doubts the virgin birth and any physical resurrection, counts as a Christian. Basically, Keller said 'no,' and Carter 'yes,' so you’re the tiebreaker. Am I a Christian?"

[Joseph Cardinal Tobin:] "I would think that if you haven’t completely closed the door on the possibility that God has more to say to you, then I think you’re in the tent.

Why income earning power isn't an acceptable measure of "fairness"

(From a Facebook discussion about income inequality:)  As I get older I get less and less enamored with using income as any kind of proxy measure of net human contribution, and by extension, of "fairness." Income is determined by the vicissitudes of whatever the marketplace happens to value at the moment, and markets are notoriously prone to short-term thinking and to encouraging participants to burden others with their "externalities," that is, with their side-effect costs such as emission of air- and water pollution. (Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.)

EXAMPLE: For several years I've volunteered a few hours a year in the Real Men Read program, reading "chapter books" to underprivileged elementary-school kids (I was recruited by a close family friend who's a teacher).  I can easily argue the case that in the long term, no one is more important to society than school teachers. Yet we pay even the best teacher a tiny fraction of, say, the income that Martin Shkreli has managed to capture.  The marketplace has highly valued his skills and has rewarded him accordingly. But his income is in no way a valid measure of his long-term contribution as a human being and thus of what's "fair" for him to get.

 

(In fairness to Skreli, I think he might well be mentally ill — or at least he's putting on a good show of it for his criminal trial — but my point remains.)

We just don't know enough about human motivation

In a Facebook thread, a conservative friend writes: "And yet, those economies where it was 'sink or swim' have thrived throughout history (in contradiction to those that were socialist)." I moved my response here.

That's an oversimplification. Sink or swim does provide a certain motivation, but humans generally aren't willing to just let others sink, even when the others' problems are their own "fault."

That's why we have laws requiring hospitals to treat emergency cases, even when the patients should have bought health insurance. That's why we have food stamps.

For that matter, that's why first responders and volunteers risk their lives to rescue people from their Harvey-flooded homes and streets, even though those people had [fouled] up by ignoring earlier warnings to evacuate.

We simply don't understand human psychology as well as we need to. In particular, we haven't developed a broadly-accepted, tested, general theory about what it takes to promote socially-desirable behavior.

Sure, we have various notions along those lines. A lot of those notions, though, are no more evidence-based than, say, bleeding a feverish patient to (supposedly) reduce the fever, as physicians used to do centuries ago.

In that vein, I thought this Kristof piece from a couple of months ago was quite thought-provoking:

... Consider baseball: Some teams pay players much more disparately than others do, and one might think that pay inequality creates incentives for better performance and more wins.

In fact, economists have crunched the data and found the opposite is true. Teams with greater equality did much better, perhaps because they were more cohesive.

What’s more, it turned out that even the stars did better when they were on teams with flatter pay. "Higher inequality seemed to undercut the superstar players it was meant to incentivize, which is what you would expect if you believed that the chief effect of pay inequality was to reduce cooperation and team cohesion," Payne notes.

Nicholas Kristof, What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness (NYTimes.com June 3, 2017) (emphasis added).

This lack of a true understanding of human motivation, and how to apply that understanding to motivate "useful" behavior, is the basis of a lot of political disagreement. For example:

• Today's GOP leadership thinks that tax cuts for the wealthy are a panacea for the economy; they think that such cuts will supposedly incentivize the wealthy to create jobs. Sure, the Laffer curve ~sounded~ good back in the 1970s. But from what I've read, most non-right-wing economists have concluded that, at the very least, the Laffer curve has been taken too far. ("If a little is good, then more would be even better — right?")
• On the other side of the aisle, some leftists seem to think that we could solve all our social ills by imposing punitive taxes on the rich and giving everyone a universal basic income (UBI) and free health care. That strikes me as likely to be a fantasy, for several reasons I won't take the time to discuss.

In sum: We just don't know where the sweet spot is for getting people to do useful things. Hell, we don't even agree that much on what we mean by "useful." And in any case, the sweet spot is likely to move around over time, just as weather patterns do.

The best we can do, I submit, is to stay focused on seeking the best for others as we do for ourselves, and to face the facts as they are revealed to us.

An interesting speculation about the Resurrection

Here's a comment from a reader, who prefers to remain anonymous but who has approved my posting this.  Boldfaced emphasis is mine, and I've added some extra paragraphing.

I came across your Blog this weekend and find it very refreshing and informative. You have addressed many of my doubts and concerns about the mainstream Church's doctrine that I have been either too afraid, or insufficiently knowledgeable to answer on my own. For this I am indebted to you.

Today I was reading through your essays on the Resurrection - an event which I have never been able to accept as being literally true, based solely on my gut feeling that 'if it doesn't make sense, it probably didn't happen'.

Your alternate explanations have resonated with what I was unable to clearly formulate on my own, the feeling that it just didn't fly. (Sidebar: I'm not an attorney but I have spent most of the past 40 years in the field of video surveillance and intelligence gathering. One develops a sort of Jedi ability to separate fact from fiction)

I wonder if you have considered a third possible explanation of the Resurrection story? That is, that when Jesus was removed from the cross he was actually still alive. Barely, of course, and in critical condition, but to all outward appearances (and given the level of medical knowledge available at the time) he was thought to be deceased.

Figuring this option into your description of Joseph of Arimathea removing Jesus from the tomb, perhaps he, Joseph, discovered Jesus to be still alive and took him to a secret location where he could receive some healing and be safe from discovery. Maybe through God's intervention he recovered - and this would account for subsequent 'appearances' to his followers after a period of time. Obviously he would know that it would be unwise to stick around, and would have made his escape into obscurity.

Am I right in thinking he remained on the Cross for only a few hours, due mainly to the approaching Sabbath, and could conceivable have survived? And the fact that Joseph whisked him away so quickly may also have been because he felt there was a chance Jesus wasn't dead? 

My response, slightly edited:

Thanks for reaching out, [NAME].  Nearly all of your conjecture about Jesus' being taken off the cross barely alive and then "escaping into obscurity," as you put it, is certainly more plausible than either (i) the conventional orthodox narrative, or (ii) Hugh Schonfield's The Passover Plot, which always struck me as far-fetched. 

 

I'm intrigued by your idea that a recovered Jesus, after the scare of his near-death experience, might well have changed his mind about trying to overthrow Israel's oppressors and usher in God's reign.  In that scenario, though, we'd still have to account for Jesus' brother James' being part of the early church; this would presuppose that Jesus didn't simply go back to his old life in Nazareth, but instead abandoned his family and effectively disappeared.  That makes me lean more toward the notion that Jesus simply died and was secretly buried.

 

Sadly, we're not likely ever to know the truth (unless Benjamin Franklin was correct).

Kristof's good-news column

The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof reminds us that life is a movie, not a snapshot. EXCERPT:

 

"Every day, another 250,000 people graduate from extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures. About 300,000 get electricity for the first time. Some 285,000 get their first access to clean drinking water. When I was a boy, a majority of adults had always been illiterate, but now more than 85 percent can read.

 

"Family planning leads parents to have fewer babies and invest more in each. The number of global war deaths is far below what it was in the 1950s through the 1990s, let alone the murderous 1930s and ’40s."

 

 

Success: How much is due to effort, and how much to luck?

This is an interesting discussion thread about how success depends not just on our own efforts, but on luck, too — especially in our choices of parents and of upbringing — and so we ought to have plenty of sympathy for those who come up short in the luck category. Excerpt: "When once asked for the secret of financial success, he [the Duke of Westminster] replied it was to have an ancestor who had been a close friend of William the Conqueror."

 

 

Inequality can be good for society — until it isn't

I'd always accepted the assumption that a certain level of inequality was good for society because it helps to motivate less-well-off individuals to get busy and up their game. But studies seem to suggest that the "machinery" of a sports team, a company, a community, etc., can be thrown out of whack by too much inequality. It sounds like the way that the machinery of the human body can be thrown out of whack by too much salt, too much vitamin D, etc.

Here's an excerpt from a June 5 piece on this subject in the NY Times by Nicholas Kristof, What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness:

... Consider baseball: Some teams pay players much more disparately than others do, and one might think that pay inequality creates incentives for better performance and more wins.

In fact, economists have crunched the data and found the opposite is true. Teams with greater equality did much better, perhaps because they were more cohesive.

What’s more, it turned out that even the stars did better when they were on teams with flatter pay. "Higher inequality seemed to undercut the superstar players it was meant to incentivize, which is what you would expect if you believed that the chief effect of pay inequality was to reduce cooperation and team cohesion," Payne notes.

This might well raise doubts whether laissez-faire, libertarian, free-market economics is really the best way to promote human progress.

Breathing, Photosynthesis, and the Continuing Creation

Think about what happened the last time you took a breath, and consider the cosmic machinery that made it possible:

• Within your body, the oxygen that you inhaled got combined with the energy-storing molecules in your food to release energy. That energy was used by your brain, your muscles, etc., to leave the cosmos just a tiny bit different than the way it was before.
• The energy you used to make that cosmic change had to be packed into your food somehow.  As we know from high-school biology, plants stored that energy in the food's constituent molecules, using CO2 from the air and sunlight as "feedstocks" for photosynthesis.
• One of the byproducts of your changing the cosmos was your release of a certain amount of carbon dioxide back into the air when you exhaled.
• Your exhaled CO2 will eventually be recycled by other plants — again using solar-powered photosynthesis — into still more molecules that will show up in foods, building materials, etc.
• Oh, and this:  All those molecules we've been talking about?  Every single molecule on the planet (apart from hydrogen and maybe some of the helium) is composed of atoms from the ashes of one or more exploded stars.
• And those dead stars? They came about as a result of a titanic process that's been in progress for billions of years, starting with the unimaginably-huge release of energy at (what we call) the Big Bang.

So let's sum up:  We humans are part of a very-long-term process by which the energy from the Big Bang is being busily transformed into an ever-evolving universe.  

If we wanted to speculate, we might even call this process a project — a continuing creation — in which we get to participate.

(Inspired by an NPR commentary yesterday by astrophysicist Dr. Adam Frank reminding us of the wonder of photosynthesis.)

Now it's Africa's turn to get new job opportunities for low-skilled workers

This seems like a long-term Good Thing:  Chinese workers' expectations are rising, and so some Chinese manufacturers are starting to export their jobs to Africa, whose poorer workers can certainly use the income and a chance to get a foot on the economic ladder.  Here's an excerpt from a NY Times report:

... Global brands flocked to China to tap into the country’s cheap and willing labor pool.

Today, Chinese workers are less cheap and less willing. More young people are going to college and want office jobs. The blue-collar work force is aging. Long workdays in a factory no longer appeal to those older workers, even with the promise of overtime pay.

* * *

Citing labor costs and the country’s foreign investment push, Huajian is building a sprawling complex of factories, office buildings and a hotel on the southern outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Mr. Zhang’s shoe factories there already have 5,000 employees. ...

(Keith Bradsher, Chinese Maker of Ivanka Trump’s Shoes Looks for Cheaper Labor, NY Times, June 1, 2017.)

 

Suggested reading: Bibles and other religion books

A reader sent me an email this week, excerpted below:

... Today, I happily stumbled upon your blog via a web search regarding the possibility of being Christian while not believing in the divinity of Jesus. I have spent the past hour or so looking over your previous posts, and I am finding them most helpful in my current faith journey.

I particularly value your definition of faith as: (i) accepting that a Creator exists and (ii) trusting that, in the end, all will be well. This resonates deeply with me.

... I realize you have not posted much lately, but I hope you can assist me. Could you please recommend: 1) books that reflect your views on Christianity and faith, and 2) a good English translation of the Bible?

(Extra paragraphing added.)

 

Many thanks to that reader, whose email inspired me to put together the following lists.

 

(The links below are not "affiliate" links, incidentally.)

 

Bible

I normally quote from the New International Version, for two reasons: (1) It's fairly readable, and (2) it's a favorite of evangelicals and conservatives --- if I quoted from a more-"liberal" translation, that might give those folks an excuse to discount or ignore the point I'm trying to make. 

 

My own personal favorite Bible is the New Revised Standard Version, especially the HarperCollins Study Bible, which has lots of footnotes and annotations. 

 

I've found useful the NKJV Greek-English Interlinear New Testament. ("NKJV" stands for New King James Version.)

Books

The following list of books is in no particular order, from scanning across my bookshelves:

• Gregg Easterbrook, Beside Still Waters -- a journalist's critical study of the Bible while his wife was a diplomat stationed in Pakistan.
• Nevada Barr, Seeking Enlightenment Hat by Hat -- a memoir of the author's personal journey to faith; see this short excerpt.
• Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew -- Vermes was born a Hungarian Jew, baptized Catholic at age seven, became a priest, but later returned to Judaism; a professor at Oxford.
• Geza Vermes, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus
• Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus
• Richard Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God -- a historical examination of the christological battle between Athanasius and Arius that led to the adoption (and imposition) of the Nicene Creed.
• Bart Ehrman - Misquoting Jesus -- Ehrman, an academic, was an enthusiastic evangelical in his youth but his study of original texts led him away from faith.
• James R. Adams, So You Think You're Not Religious? A Thinking Person's Guide to the Church -- Adams was an Episcopal priest in Washington D.C.
• James R. Adams, From Literal to Literary: The Essential Reference Book for Biblical Metaphors -- I just ordered it and haven't read it.  In looking up Adams, I saw that he died in 2011, and his obituary in the Washington Post mentioned it.
• Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity -- this is an accessible historical treatment by a sociologist from that professional perspective.

I've omitted some writers whose works I found valuable but that I regard as less accessible, such as:

• John Dominic Crossan, a scholar and former Catholic priest
• Paula Frederiksen, a Boston University professor
• John Polkinghorne, a renowned Cambridge University particle physicist turned Anglican priest, but some of whose science-based arguments I find less than convincing
• A. N. Wilson
• Paul Johnson

I've also omitted writers whom I regard as assuming too many facts not in evidence or being insufficiently skeptical, such as N.T. Wright (conservative) and Marcus Borg (liberal).

 

Finally, I've omitted various translations of primary sources.

 

 

 

 

 

The real meaning of "science" -- Dr. Atul Gawande's CalTech commencement address

Dr. Atul Gawande is one of my heroes. His CalTech commencement address of yesterday should be required reading for any informed citizen of any country.

Excerpt:

If this place has done its job—and I suspect it has—you’re all scientists now. Sorry, English and history graduates, even you are, too.

Science is not a major or a career. It is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, an allegiance to a way of building knowledge and explaining the universe through testing and factual observation.

[DCT comment: In other words, "science" is the practice of dealing with the universe as it is — or in another formulation: as the Creator wrought it — and not as necessarily being now what we wish it were.]

The thing is, that [the scientific mindset] isn’t a normal way of thinking. It is unnatural and counterintuitive. It has to be learned. Scientific explanation stands in contrast to the wisdom of divinity and experience and common sense.

Common sense once told us that the sun moves across the sky and that being out in the cold produced colds. But a scientific mind recognized that these intuitions were only hypotheses. They had to be tested.

(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)

Read it all.

Free will isn't all it's cracked up to be -- but it's probably not nothing either

The determinist viewpoint recounted in this article seems like unwarranted either-or binary thinking. That view appears to posit that either we're totally in control of ourselves, or we have no control at all. I suspect that doesn't square with most people's personal experiences.

(Cf. Paul's letter to the Romans: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."  Rom. 7.15)

One problem might lie in the nomenclature. The term "free will" is simply wrong. And it's not like "sunrise," which is likewise wrong but for everyday purposes the error is harmless.

(Article: Steven Cave, There's No Such Thing as Free Will, The Atlantic, June 2016.)

Another Pope Francis, from 1978

Like many people, I'm starting to really admire Pope Francis for his humility and simplicity. When I first heard that the new pope had chosen that name, I immediately thought of one of my all-time favorite novels, The Vicar of Christ, by Princeton professor Walter F. Murphy, published in 1978, which spent three months on the NY Times best-seller list.  It's on the bookshelf directly behind me as I write this.  

The protagonist is an American, Declan Patrick Walsh, the son of a career diplomat, Marine war hero (as was the author), and law professor.  Walsh's unusual path to the papacy is imaginatively written but not implausible. As pope, he takes the name Francesco (after both Francis of Assisi and Francis Xavier, one of the first Jesuits), and emphasizes simplicity and helping the poor.

The New York Times's obituary of author Murphy quotes a Times reviewer:  “If, to keep in touch, you require yourself to read at least one best-selling novel a year, ‘The Vicar of Christ’ is the one. It has the grace to click.”

Highly recommended.

How to get rid of the Hastert rule: Go back to the old rules for discharge petitions

I'm a lifelong Republican, but if you ask me, it ought to be an impeachable offense* for speakers of the House of Representatives to follow the GOP's so-called Hastert rule, the way John Boehner seems to have done until virtually the last minute in the recent "fiscal cliff" negotiations.

The House Democrats should aggressively attack the Hastert rule by pushing to go back to the old rules for discharge petitions. If the House GOP won't go along, the Dems should file suit in federal court to enjoin Speaker Boehner from applying the Hastert rule. The threat of the Speaker being dragged into court and forced to explain his bill-management decisions might be enough to get the GOP to cooperate on restoring the discharge petition rules to the way they used to be.

* Yes, I know impeachment would be a practical impossibility: Under the Constitution, the House itself would have to approve articles of impeachment, and it's hard to imagine any situation in which the majority would vote to impeach its own leader.

The Hastert "rule" can disenfranchise the House minority

In a nutshell, the Hastert "rule" says that the speaker of the House of Representatives will not allow the House to vote on any bill even one that's supported by a majority of House members and therefore would pass if it were brought up for a vote — if the bill does not have the support of a majority of the Republican caucus.

The Hastert rule, of course, isn't actually a rule at all, or at least certainly not a rule of procedure duly enacted by the House pursuant to its constitutional power to do so. No, the Hastert rule is a ruthless political practice followed by recent Republican speakers, notably Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, and John Boehner.

One notable recent exception to the Hastert rule: As New Year's Day drew to a close, the House finally voted on the Senate's fiscal-cliff bill, approving it 257 to 167, with 64% of House Republicans voting "no." A couple of days later, former speaker Hastert reportedly warned on Fox News Radio that Speaker Boehner allowed more bills to come up without the support of the House's GOP majority, hewould be giving up his power; Hastert was quoted as saying:

When you start passing stuff that your members are not in line with, all of a sudden your ability to lead is in jeopardy because somebody else is making decisions. The president is making decisions, [House Minority Leader Nancy] Pelosi is making decisions, or they are making the decisions in the Senate. All tax bills and all spending bills under the Constitution start in the house. When you give up that responsibility you really give up your responsibility to govern, and that is the problem. [Emphasis added.]

Jesus. Does Dennis Hastert really think that the responsibility to govern, on any issue, lies with just the majority caucus of the House?

The Constitution gives the House's power to the whole House, not to the Speaker or the majority caucus

Certainly it makes sense for the Speaker to have some discretion to decide what bills will be brought up for a vote; somebody has to manage the work flow.

But the Hastert rule grossly abuses that discretion. The constitutional authority to approve or reject a bill lies with the House as a whole, not with any particular caucus.

It's outrageous that recent GOP speakers have abandoned their fiduciary duty to the House — and to the nation — by abdicating to their caucus majorities the power and duty to decide whether a given bill will get a vote.

One way to restore checks and balances here: Go back to the old rules for discharge petitions

House rules do allow members to sign a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill. In theory, that provides a check to the power of the Speaker, or of the majority of a committee, to control which bills are brought to the floor for a vote.

But a discharge petition is a toothless remedy against abuses of that power. That's because any discharge petition needs the public signatures of an absolute majority of the House, namely 218 members. This means that at least some members of the majority party must sign on to any discharge petition. And given all the power wielded by the speaker and other House leadership, how many members of a majority party would be willing to risk retribution from the leadership by signing a discharge petition? That's right: Not many.

A better rule would be that:

• signatures to a discharge petition are kept secret until the requisite number of signatures are gathered, as was the case before 1993, and
• a smaller number of signatures is needed: either one-third, as was the case before 1935, or perhaps the number of signatures corresponding to one-half of the minority caucus. For example: As I write this, 113th Congress was sworn in today, with the House now containing 234 Republicans, 200 Democrats, and 1 vacancy. If a half-the-minority number were used, then a discharge petition could succeed with only 100 signatures.

This would provide an appropriate check and balance: The Speaker can follow the Hastert rule if he or she chooses, but a significant number of rep­re­sent­a­tives can dynamite the log jam if they so choose, with less fear of repercussion.

Some might complain that this could allow the minority caucus to flood the House agenda with demands for votes on bills that are supposedly doomed to defeat. I say, fine — if a reasonable number of House members are willing to sign their names to a discharge petition, then the presumption ought to be that the bill should get an up or down vote. There would seem to be no more risk of abuse by the minority than by the majority.

Oops — there's another problem: Providing the minority with more power to overcome stonewalling by the majority might lead to more genuine nego­ti­a­tion between the parties about important bills. And we certainly can't have that, can we?

The House GOP won't change the discharge rules voluntarily, so House Democrats should sue to enjoin the Hastert rule

Clearly the existing GOP majority in the House won't change the discharge-petition rule. So what about court action by House Democrats? I won't try to address the constitutional issues in any depth here, in part because the judicial precedent simply isn't clear on this point.

• The Supreme Court has often been reluctant to allow the federal judiciary to get involved in "political" questions, partly on the theory that the demo­crat­ic process is better equipped than the judiciary to address such questions.

On the other hand, the Court has been willing to wade into a number of cases that arguably turned on political-type questions, such as Baker v. Carr (one person one vote), Powell v. McCormack (Congress's power to expel members), and more recently, Bush v. Gore (Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election).

• Another obstacle to a lawsuit: The Supreme Court has taken a restrictive view of the "standing" of individual members of Congress to bring suit to overturn an enacted law. See Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997) (holding that individual senators and congressmen did not have standing to challenge the Line Item Veto Act).

On the other hand, the Court might be more receptive to the standing of House minority-caucus members who in effect were stripped of their right to pass a bill that was supported by a majority of the House, just because the opposing minority happened to constitute a majority of the ruling caucus.

• Finally, the Court might not want the federal courts to get involved with the Hastert rule on prudential grounds: It would be difficult for a district court to grant and enforce injunctive relief. Suppose Speaker Boehner were to block a bill, but didn't say why — how is a district court supposed to discern whether he did so because of the Hastert rule, or for some other, legitimate reason? Is the district judge supposed to summon the Speaker into court to have him testify about his motives? That could invite abuse by the minority party. And will the minority party have to demonstrate to the district court that the blocked bill would have passed if brought to a vote? How exactly are they to do that?

So clearly a court challenge to the Hastert rule would not be without difficulties. Even so, for the sake of streamlining the dysfunctional political process on Capitol Hill, it would be good to see House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi bring such a challenge in federal court.

If nothing else, the mere filing of the lawsuit — and the prospect that House speakers might someday have to testify in court about their reasons for blocking a bill — might help motivate the GOP majority to cooperate in reforming the discharge-petition rules.

Some Russians freak out over Mayan calendar end of the world

Here we go again ....

A neurosurgeon's time in heaven

Newsweek has an excerpt from an upcoming book by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander: Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. The Newsweek excerpt tells of Alexander's experience of "heaven" while in a deep coma caused by a bacterial meningitis infection:

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history.

But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

* * *

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations.

According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

(Extra paragraphing added.)

I'm agnostic (in the weak sense) about these experiences; just because we don't know how the brain might create delusions of this kind, that's not proof of a glorious afterlife.

On the other hand, it does seem unwise to categorically dismiss the possibility that some sort of heaven does indeed exist.

Faith can arise through works -- an example

Educational researchers have shown that telling teachers to change their expectations about particular students was not nearly as effective as training the teachers to change their own behavior towards the students — which led to just the changes in expectations that the researchers had hoped to see. See this NPR Morning Edition story by reporter Alix Spiegel.  Money quote: "... to change beliefs, the best thing to do is change behaviors."

How the American interior was settled -- a word movie that brings to mind the Creator's ongoing organization of the universe

You've heard of word pictures? And you've seen those speeded-up videos of how a tall building or a ship is built?  A piece in the online NY Times by history professor Christopher Phillips provides a vivid fast-motion "word movie" of how river transportation enabled the settlement of the American interior. It made me think of what it seems to be all about in our universe, in which we humans serve as created co-creators (to use Lutheran theologian Philip Hefner's phrase), helping in a titanic construction project.

What if Aurora moviegoers had rushed the shooter, together?

At mass shootings, many people seem either to cower, not knowing what to do, or to flee. Apart from a few who courageously try to protect others, for many it's either deer in the headlights or sauve qui peut, every man for himself. We've seen this going back at least as early as the 1991 Luby's massacre in Killeen, Texas, in which 23 were killed (and the shooter killed himself), plus 20 wounded.

Cowering or fleeing is a natural human reaction. (In cold economic terms, fleeing may be the extreme case of the free-rider problem: Let someone else take care of the problem.)

But ask yourself: At the Aurora theater shooting, what would have happened if a crowd of movie­goers had immediately rushed the shooter, despite the obvious risk, because "that's what we do" for each other?  

There's no denying that the shooter might well have shot one or more of his attackers. At the Luby's massacre, 71-year-old (!) Al Gratia rushed at the shooter and was fatally shot in the chest. (It's noteworthy that the selfless Gratia was a World War II veteran.)

But if lots of people had attacked at Luby's or at the Aurora theater, a lot of lives might have been saved:

• The shooter wouldn't have had time to get off so many shots before being overpowered.
• Nor would he have had as much time to take careful aim, so whomever he did manage to shoot might well have been wounded, not killed. 
• Conceivably the shooter, surprised at being attacked himself, might have 'frozen,' in which case he might not have shot anyone else. 

And would the Aurora shooter have proceeded if he knew in advance that he was going to be immediately attacked by the crowd?  He seems to have acted pretty "rationally," in a twisted sort of way. He had full body armor.  He was well-armed.  He had thought through his plan at least somewhat.  If he had known that he was going to be immediately tackled by the crowd, he might have proceeded with his plan anyway — but maybe not.

That's why (it's been said) a 9/11-style airplane hjacking will never happen again: terrorists know that the passengers will rush and overpower the hijackers. The terrorists might be able to blow up the plane, or to crash it, but they won't be able to use it as a fuel-laden guided missile to kill thousands of others.  Americans have learned from the heroic example of the passengers on United Flight 93, who stopped its hijackers from flying the plane into the White House or the Capitol. (Some­thing similar actually occurred in the case of the shoe bomber, who was overpowered by flight attendants and passengers.)

Let's be clear about a couple of things here.  First, I'm talking here about fighting back against a mass murderer like the guy in Aurora; I absolutely do not mean invoking a stand-your-ground law as an excuse to shoot somebody. Second, special cases exist: Let's say you're a parent with kids in tow (or in your arms); in that kind of situation, your first obligation is to protect your kids as best you can, and that will almost certainly call for a snap judgment call.

But otherwise, we Americans should commit ourselves to a higher stand­ard: If, God forbid, we ever find ourselves in a mass-shooting situation, then we will attack, immediately — and trust that we won't be alone — because we owe that to each other. The Department of Home­land Security says that attacking the shooter should be a last resort, but I think that's backwards. 

Would I personally react by rushing the shooter in an Aurora-type emergency? I wish I knew; I certainly hope so.

Jim Greenwood's report on General Convention's authorization of same-sex blessings

My longtime friend Jim Greenwood, a fellow parishioner at St. John the Divine in Houston, has said I could post the report he emailed to friends about his experience at the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church.  

You might have seen in the news that the General Convention authorized a rite for the blessing of lifelong committed same-sex relationships.

Jim is a lawyer / mediator and a former member of the City Council of the city of Houston.

He recounts in his report that he has a personal interest in the issue:  His and his wife Cody's twin daughters are both in committed same-sex relationships.

Bravo, Jim!

Download Jim's report (PDF)

Jim Jones's lover thought he was God

From a NY Times on-line piece about Jim Jones, who led some 900 followers to their deaths by cyanide suicide in Jonestown, Guyana:

Ms. O’Shea joined the Peoples Temple as a secretary in 1971, when she was 19. She said she eventually became Mr. Jones’s confidante and lover; “I thought he was God,” she said. “I thought God had picked me to be a mate.”

Rick Perry and the efficacy of prayer

Um, not really ....

Some Sarah Palin supporters are akin to biblical inerrantists - James McGrath

I'm beginning to be a fan of Dr. James McGrath. His recent post on the Christian Century blog, Inerrancy of the Bible and Sarah Palin, addressed those who would rewrite history when it doesn't fit their preconceived notions. He was on the money in this passage:

I suggested recently that one of the most fundamental elements of Christianity is repentance – acknowledging we were wrong and making efforts to be less wrong in the future. And one can see a faithful expression of this core Christian conviction in the history of Liberal Protestantism and its role in developing and embracing the tools of critical study of the Bible, and the integration of new scientific knowledge.

Admitting the Bible was wrong, admitting Jesus was wrong, when the evidence points in that direction, is not a denial of the Christian faith, but an expression of one of its most basic tenets: the fallibility of human beings and the resulting need to be open to correction.

(Links omitted.) I made a couple of comments in the discussion following his post.

It's been said that we're all entitled to our own opinions, but we're not entitled to our own facts. Fidelity to the First Commandment dictates that we live in the world God wrought, not in a 'world' that we create in our imaginations -- and inerrantists of all kinds are guilty of violating that corollary.