Harvard Justice: A Christian Perspective

Harvard Justice is a series of lectures recorded at Harvard University on the subject of the philosophy of ethics.  If that sounds stuffy, academic and uninteresting then I urge you to suspend your judgement and take a look.  The series is free on Youtube and it would be worthwhile to at least view the first couple presentations. The professor is Michael Sandel who is engaging in his presentation an excellent facilitator for the student interaction.  The scenarios and thought experiments did make me think and think in a constructive way.  Sandel presents the various ways of approaching ethics such consequentialism, libertarianism and others.  Again, if this  series sounds stuffy but I assure you it is not boring.  One thing I like is the Sandel presents each philosophical approach objectively and clearly.

While I definitely recommend this series, from a Christian point of view there is something missing.  The students engaged in some good interaction offering a variety of perspectives however the basis or foundation of the opinions was missing.  It is true that all the students have  a strong sense of moral values even if they did disagree on various points.  However the basis for those values was just one’s experience and feelings.  In the opening lecture, one goal of the was to examine the presuppositions for ethical values however, in the end, it was each individual’s feelings of right and wrong which formed the basis for those values.  Without a set of transcendent moral values and duties, it appears we are left with various opinions.  Who is to determine whose opinions shall prevail?  From a Christian perspective, every person has a set of moral values written on their conscience.  It is revealed to us in the Bible that God has written his law upon each human heart.  But the origin of those ethical values is not individual feelings and experiences which leads to relativism but rather these values and duties are objectively true (i.e. true for everybody) since the origin is from God.  Without the foundation, each person’s opinion (or each person’s ethical philosophy) is just one of many.  From this observation comes one of the strongest arguments of God’s existence and it goes like this.  It is called the Moral Argument.  1)Without God, there can be no objective moral values and duties.  2)There are objective moral values and duties (based on foundational human knowledge).  3)Therefore there is a God.  It is a deductive argument so to deny the conclusion, you must deny at least one the the premises.  So if you disagree, which premise do you disagree with?

“The paradigm itself is non-negotiable”

We like to think of science as a neutral enterprise with scientists just following where the evidence leads.  The presuppositions of scientists are often unspoken and rarely even considered.  Thomas Kuhn wrote an influential book in 1963 titled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.  Kuhn pointed out that scientists do their work within a specific paradigm.  During those rate times of rapid scientific change, the paradigm also changes.  During “normal” (i.e. slow, progressive change) scientists work entirely with the given paradigm.  Kuhn writes “When scientists share a paradigm they do not just agree on certain scientific propositions, the agree also on how future scientific research in their field should proceed, on which problems are the pertinent one to tackle, on what the appropriate methods for solving those problems are, on what acceptable solution of the problems would look like and so on. “  In the book Philosophy of Science, A Very Short Introduction the author S. Okasha writes “Above all, Kuhn stressed that normal scientists are not trying to test the paradigm.  On the contrary, they accept the paradigm unquestioningly and conduct their research within the limits it sets.”  Mr. Okasha writes “The paradigm itself is non-negotiable”.  Evidence for this is in the emerging field of Intelligent Design (ID).  Today’s mainstream scientific paradigm is macro evolution and anything outside of that is dismissed without a second glance.  This is despite the fact a growing minority of scientists have serious doubts about Darwinian evolution and that at least 50 peer-review articles have already been published that support Intelligent Design.  In my previous blogs I have given a quick overview with references pointing to evidence of ID.  Yet with all this accumulating evidence most academic biologists irrationally resort to anger and name calling.  They call the research ID religious creationism even though ID uses empirical evidence only and does not refer to any religious tradition or text.  Those researchers who do not have tenure at Universities support ID only at their peril of being fired from their position.  See the podcast Evolution’s Glass Ceiling to learn more about this.  Thomas Kuhn’s theory of how science works is being played out before our very eyes.  Scientists do not necessarily follow to where the evidence leads if it leads out of the current scientific paradigm.  This creates a degree of frustration for ID researchers but should not come as a surprise.  To repeat, “The paradigm itself is non-negotiable”.

To learn more about Intelligent Design, here are some web links

http://www.discovery.org/csc/

http://www.idthefuture.com/

http://www.evolutionnews.org/

Why People Do Bad Things

In 2006 I became intrigued by the story of David Verholt.  Mr. Verholt was working as a vice president of KeyBank in Cleveland Ohio making about $110,000 annually.  In 2006 he was arrested for an embezzling scheme at KeyBank in which he took $40M in fraudulent loans.  One intriguing aspect to this is that this went on for 10 years before he was caught.  One would think the internal controls at Key Bank would not let this continue for this length of time.  The other more intriguing aspect is why?  How does a successful family man with a good income get involved with this level of unethical behaviour?  Since this new story was published I would, from time to time, think about this question.  Of course David Verholt is just one person among many including Bernie Madoff, Enron execs, Worldcom execs, etc.  There has also been recently many journalists of unethical behaviour.  The  August 2, 2012 Christian Science Monitor reported on the story of Jonah Lehrer who resigned from the New Yorker magazine after admitting to fabricating quotations and attributing them to Bob Dylan.  The article went on to list other recent ethical failures by journalists.  From the article I quote,

“Two years ago, Daily Beast chief investigative reporter Gerald Posner resigned after it was revealed that he’d plagiarized sentences from other writers’ stories – he says he did so inadvertently, by rewriting things he’d read online. The New York Times was stunned in 2003 when it discovered reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated and plagiarized stories.
The problem is not limited to print. Earlier this year, Mike Daisey was forced to admit he had exaggerated storytelling about Chinese factories making iPods and Apple hardware in a story broadcast on the public radio program “This American Life.”
The most notorious case might be Janet Cooke, whose Pulitzer-Prize winning 1980 Washington Post story featured a person who did not exist. “

The cumulative effect of these ethical failures gives one pause. Are these just character flaws of a certain minority of people? Are these people “bad eggs”?  As I look upon these things from a Christian worldview, the Christian doctrine of the universal sinful nature appears very evident indeed.  This doctrine states that within each man and women there is a flawed (often very flawed) way of thinking. Although we know the right thing to do we (including me), very often fail to do the right thing.  It is not a matter of knowledge but rather one of the will.   I know that this line of thinking is diametrically opposed to current of popular thought today but there seemed to be no alternative explanation.  Therefore I was interested in an episode of NPR’s Planet Money broadcast earlier this year entitled “Why People Do Bad Things”.  I was interested because here was an opportunity to explain bad behavior from a secular perspective.  The program focused on a man Toby Groves who started off in business with very high ethical standards and even made a vow to his father that he would not fall into disgrace (you need to listen to the podcast).  Yet in the end, Toby Groves committed a multi-million dollar bank fraud, drove several companies out of business resulting in job losses of hundreds of people.   How could this happen?  Did Toby have an unusual character flaw?  Was Toby just a “bad egg”?  Lamar Pierce of Washington University in St. Louis weighed in on that question.  Dr. Pierce commented that this was actually not that unusual and that most of us could be lured into the same unethical behaviour given the same context.  But that still leaves the question why when a person is in that position that he crosses that ethical line.  What were Toby Groves and David Verhotz thinking?  Here is where a University of Notre Dame professor was interviewed to answer this psychological question.  The answer given is that when one is in the business frame of mind, one loses the ability to evaluate right and wrong.  She said that in certain contexts, the cognitive faculties do not work properly.  Toby couldn’t process the choices put before him. This almost sounds like a symptom of a mental illness in that Toby did not know right and wrong. (This also begins to resemble to doctrine of original sin!)  After listening to this program I realized that these explanations from secular academia fall far short of a satisfying reason for bad behaviour.  Of course Toby knew right and wrong and he knew the line he was crossing but did it anyway.  This wasn’t the case of incomplete knowledge.  Clearly the secularist has no explanation.  Could it be that the inference to the best explanation is the very idea that most people do not want to hear, namely,  the Christian idea of the basic sinfulness of man?  But why should it be hard to believe since it is the one Christian doctrine that is proven every day in the morning newspaper.  To quote Peter Kreeft, “Once the main obstacle to believe in Christianity was the good news. It seemed like a fairy tale; too good to be true. Today, the main obstacle is the bad news; people just don’t believe in sin even though that is the only Christian doctrine that can be proven by reading daily newspapers.”  Most people believe that they are like the children in Garrison Keeler’s Lake Woebegon - above average.  Yet those pesky facts do have way of getting in the way of our opinions.

Were the Magi from China?

During the Christmas season the story of the visit of the Magi is frequently retold. But who were these Magi and where were they from? Most often Persia or Babylon is cited as the origin of the Magi. This is because the origin of the word Magi can be traced back to Persia and Zoroastrian. Since the Bible does not specifically say where the Magi were from, many others ideas are offered such as they were from Yemen since in Yemen there were Jewish kings at the time.
Most interestingly, there is some interesting evidence that they could have come from China. First, when Herod found out is had been tricked he ordered the killing of all males under the age of two based on the timing of when the Magi saw the star. This means that they journey to Israel most likely took well over a year. Certainly a journey from Babylon or Yemen would not take that long. But one to two years is consistent with a more distant place such as China. Secondly, there recently has been an English translation of an obscure 8th century manuscript found in Turkey. The translation was done by Brent Landau as part of his doctoral dissertation at Harvard Divinity School. Landau subsequently published a book Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem. This book describes the Magi as from an ancient sect descended from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. From Seth they inherited a prophecy of "a star of indescribable brightness" someday appearing and "heralding the birth of God in human form." This same star had initially hovered over the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Also, the Magi are described as coming from a land called Shir, "located in the extreme east of the world, at the shore of the Great Ocean." In other ancient texts, Shir is referred to "as a place where silk comes from," suggesting that the references were to China. Landau also writes that Magi in Syriac (the ancient Aramaic dialect), means "to pray in silence." Landau says it has no relationship to magicians or astrologers, sometimes cited in stories today. The text names 12 Magi, not three, while other parts of the text suggest that "a group the size of a small army" traveled to Bethlehem. The Bible never does say how many Magi there were but the fact that there were three gifts led people to believe that there were three Magi. In China at that time there was a well-known astronomer and historian Liu Xin. Some Chinese Christians do believe the Magi were from China. (ref. Back to Jerusalem, Gabriel Publishing, 2003) While all of this evidence is certainly not conclusive, it is interesting to consider that God may have given a witness to the coming of Christ to China long before the Nestorians came in the early part of the Tang Dynasty.

As a convenient reference, here is the story from the Gospel of Mathew.

When Jesus was born in the village of Bethlehem in Judea, Herod was king. During this time some wise men from the east came to Jerusalem and said, "Where is the child born to be king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him." When King Herod heard about this, he was worried, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. Herod brought together the chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses and asked them, "Where will the Messiah be born?"
They told him, "He will be born in Bethlehem, just as the prophet wrote,
Bethlehem in the land of Judea, you are very important among the towns of Judea. From your town will come a leader, who will be like a shepherd for my people Israel.' "
Herod secretly called in the wise men and asked them when they had first seen the star. He told them, "Go to Bethlehem and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, let me know. I want to go and worship him too."
The wise men listened to what the king said and then left. And the star they had seen in the east went on ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. They were thrilled and excited to see the star.
When the men went into the house and saw the child with Mary, his mother, they knelt down and worshiped him. They took out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh and gave them to him. Later they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, and they went back home by another road.

A Shared Sense of History

To some social commentators, it seems that in America the social fabric is a little frayed at the seams. Perhaps the reversal of the ever increase trajectory of prosperity has exposed an underlying weakness. Writers have written that there is a malaise in the land. The idea of living in a small village where people are connected with each other and support each other has an almost universal appeal. I would like to suggest the source of this appeal is, in part, that ther

e is a lack of a shared sense of history in our more modern society. A diverse and pluralistic society brings a vitality of energy and ideas but how do we retain a shared sense of history and destiny and why is that even important? Michael Creighton, the popular author, is quoted as saying “If you don’t now [your family’s] history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of the tree.” So what is the importance of the leaf knowing it is part of the tree. Here are four reasons.

1. First it give us solid place to stand. Unlike the a Canadian birling competition (seen on the right photo), a (metaphorically) solid place to stand gives us the balance to meet the unpredictability of life. We less likely to be “blown over” with the storms of life.

2. When we are connected to the past and future, we are connected with certain expectations of living. We have an identity which we tend to live out. We have a calling which we live up to.

3. Sense of trust is more easily built when there is a shared sense of history. Indeed, trust is only built over time. These days our social communication seems as though we are speaking past each other. Without trust, communication is strained and awkward. Built on a history of trust, communication become effortless.

4. We can better understand life itself. Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish gadfly, writes “life must be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. Life will then feel less chaotic.

To anyone who feels their life to be drifting, I encourage you to consider the fellowship found within the Christian church. From the outside there does not appear to be anything appealing but within this community you will be welcomed. You will be connected to a shared history of thousands of years and a shared destiny. In this way, life can be better understood without leaving the modern day world but rather living in it. You will have a firm place to stand. As John Calvin writes, "In this way our [destiny] rests on a foundation so firm and sure, that though the whole fabric of the world were to give way, it could not be destroyed." You will know that you are " part of the tree" and are planted firmly in good earth.

Not a Chance

With this blog entry, I am concluding the long series which puts forth evidence to the question, “How did we get here?”. As anyone can see, I am providing evidence for the existence of a designer for our world. In this respect, I am on the opposite side of the fence of most who would believe our world, and indeed ourselves, is the result of purely natural processes, that is, by chance. However the evidence I have presented in this blog is pointing to a different conclusion. In the past blogs, I have provided evidence from a variety of sources and viewpoints as follows:

Evidence from mathematics
Evidence from astronomy, the Universe
Evidence from astronomy, the Earth
Evidence from Physics
Evidence from the fossil record
Evidence from biology
Evidence from biological information

The cumulative evidence from all these areas points to a designer. Each of these blog entries provides links for those who want to investigate further. One can read The Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins) or the Grand Designer (Hawking) that argue for the appearance of design but the world, in fact, is a result of chance + time. I have responded to Hawking’s new book in another blog entry. While the evidence for a designer will not convince everybody, no one can say that there is no scientific evidence for a designer. That is, no one can say this unless they refuse to consider this evidence which is a response of the will and not the intellect. So let the debate begin - at least in those forums where opposing opinions are not silenced.

What is the significance of this information? The significance is that the big questions in life relate to origins, meaning, morality and destiny. Any credible world view must provide a coherent response to these four questions. That is, one’s view of origins must be coherent to one’s view of morality, meaning and destiny. Without this coherency, a specific world view is not intellectually significant. In this respect, the questions of origins is very important. As this series comes to a conclusion, I will move on to discuss these other questions.

The Origin of Us

Where did we come from? It is not a question we think about during the course of our days which are filled with more practical matters. Given that is the question even important at all? I get to that question is a later blog. For now I want to explore the science of origins - the origin of life itself. In the 19th century, it was assumed that creating life would be rather easy. The intricacies of cell biology were unknown. Biologists tends to see the cell (in Haekel’s words) as a “homogeneous globule of protoplasm”. The thought in those days was that all the was necessary was to mix some basics ingredients into a “soup” add time and life emerges. It was only in the 1930s that scientist began to see the the cell was quite complex. Scientists repeatedly underestimated the cells complexity. It was only in the 1950s that the true complexity of the cell was starting to revealed as the structure of DNA was beginning to be understood. What we now know today is the enormous amount of information which is encoded in DNA. Not just biology but information theory must be studied. The cell has information but it is specified information, that is, it specifies functionality. It is not just random information but highly specific information. Therefore any origin of life theory must explain how the “software” programming” of the cell came to be. We now know that this type of specified complexity is beyond the reach of chance (refer to Scientific American, “The Constraints of Chance”, Jan 1996). Even a short 100 amino acid chain has a random probability of form which a chance of 1 in 1060 which is vanishingly small as there are only 1065 atoms in the universe. Other speculative theories have arisen that deal with self-organizational scenarios but all have come up short in explain how the information in even the simplest cell could arise. There is no naturalistic explanation at the current time. The only theory which has any credibility as this time is the argument from intelligent design. This is not an argument from ignorance but rather an argument from the evidence. This background information and the case of the intelligent design inference is now well documented. For those who want a detailed, long but readable article on these matters, refer to Dr. S.C Meyers article “DNA and the Origin of Life: Information, Specification and Explanation".