Randal Rauser's Blog, page 140

Stephen Colbert, Paul Ryan, and their subtly sexist critiques of Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a misogynistic pig. That much we can agree on. (Warning: if we can’t agree on that much, we probably won’t agree on much more.)

But the more sobering fact is that some of the most notable “critiques” of Trump are couched in a subtler form of sexism. And given that subtlety, they may ultimately be more troubling than the porcine braying of Trump himself.

The first example comes from Stephen Colbert, a man for whom I have much respect. (Although if I’m honest, I had more respect before he left Comedy Central.)

In this video Colbert tries to take down Donald Trump based on the latest debased revelations:

Kudos to Colbert for combining the shock of a normal human being reacting to Trump’s beastly shenanigans along with some incisive critique.

But don’t miss the fact that along the way Colbert refers to upcoming Late Show guest Diane Lane as “lovely, talented and beautiful”. If you’re keeping count, that is two references to physical appearance book-ending one reference to ability.

Now I’ll grant you that Colbert’s faux pas is worlds distant from Trump’s brutish misogyny. But even so, it is still in the same universe: it’s a universe where women are treated differently from men simply in virtue of their gender. In this case, they are judged disproportionately relative to their physical appearance.

Our second example comes from Paul Ryan who offered the following sharp reprimand to Donald Trump for the Access Hollywood debacle:

“Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified. I hope Mr. Trump treats this situation with the seriousness it deserves and works to demonstrate to the country that he has greater respect for women than this clip suggests.”

Did you get that? In this case, Ryan seeks to critique Trump with a statement that women, as a gender, are to be “revered”. Really? All of them? Simply in virtue of being gendered female?

We return once again to the problem: women are treated differently from men simply in virtue of their gender. In this case, the difference is expressed in terms of a deference to “veneration”. To venerate is “to regard with respect tinged with awe, venerate“. So men ought to defer to those of the female gender with respect, awe, (quasi)-veneration.

How very chivalrous! When do we joust? And is there a fair lady needing to be saved from a dragon?

Okay, I get it: Ryan meant well. But the female gender doesn’t require the collective respect, awe, or veneration of the male gender. As with Colbert’s focus on grading physical appearance, this categorical elevation of the female gender is part of an outmoded worldview.

So what do women want? Well, obviously not all agree. No doubt some like this outmoded perspective from the gilded world of chivalry. The real question is this: what is fair and proper? And in my opinion the simple answer is: equality. Not a special focus on physical appearance. Not a deference to the gender as such. Rather, just treat women as you treat men: with respect, dignity, and equality.

To sum up, while I readily concede that Colbert and Ryan are worlds better than the debased prune-faced, dirty-old-man, mandarin-tinged elder-frat boy Donald Trump, I do worry that their focus on female beauty (Colbert) or their deference to the female gender (Ryan) evince outmoded sexist attitudes that belong in the same universe.

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Thanks to Donald Trump I will no longer call myself an evangelical

Donald Trump issuing his non-apology apology before he pivots to blaming the Clintons.

Many people (Republicans mostly) were apparently shocked by the latest debacle to unfold on Donald Trump’s long road to perdition: I speak, of course, of the 2005 Access Hollywood footage. This kind of disgusting glamorization of sexual assault might be expected in the high school locker room. It’s a bit more shocking coming out of the mouth of a man who was pushing 60 at the time. It’s even more shocking coming out of the mouth of a man who is now running for president. But to anybody who has paid attention to Donald Trump over the last sixteen months, it can hardly be surprising. The man has shown himself time and again to be a boorish, misogynistic orange pig. When he opens his filthy mouth the sailors blush. When he walks into a room of fence posts, the collective IQ drops. Yesterday the devil himself tweeted that he would now be voting for Gary Johnson.

But you know who remains steadfastly behind Trump? Evangelicals. “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson barked that the real problem is the Clintons: “That’s about the most ungodly bunch I’ve ever seen.” But as for Trump he says, “lighten up … and give him some time.”

Radio host Rita Cosby soothingly noted that Trump’s “a sinner, that’s a start”. Then she added, that we should “not condemn anybody.” (Except that ungodly Clinton bunch, of course.)

Pastor Mark Burns (that huckster who faked his degree and credentials to build his online “ministry”) leapt to Trump’s defense because the man had “repented and God has forgiven him…so should you.” (See this NBC article for all the above references.)

By the way, I wonder if Trump “apologizes” to Melania like that. (After all, they were married at the time.) “Well Melania, I’m sorry if you were offended that I talk about grabbing the crotches of other women, but Bill Clinton did worse back in the 90s!”

You might say, “Okay, but that’s just an obscure charlatan-preacher, a little-known radio host and a wacky reality television star. They don’t exactly represent the mainstream of respected evangelical opinion.”

Well, I dunno about that. But anyway, we also have folks that certainly are respected leaders in evangelicalism like Tony Perkins (President of the Family Research Council) and Ralph Reed (chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition).

Perkins insisted that he is unconcerned because his support for Trump is not based on shared values. It is based on shared concerns regarding issues like the Supreme Court, Islamic terror, blah blah blah.

Let that sink in. The President of the Family Research Council is unconcerned that the man he is supporting for president delights in grabbing the crotches of women and forcibly kissing them. And note that he justifies this claim by dismissing the importance of values in the candidate. That is extraordinary. Whether you agreed with them or not, at least evangelicals used to insist that the values of the candidate mattered. Now the end justifies the means.

As for the cherubic Ralph Reed (who always reminded me of Alfalfa from the Little Rascals), he dismissed the relevance of the recording:

“I’ve listened to the tape, my view is that people of faith are voting on issues like who will protect unborn life, defend religious freedom, create jobs, and oppose the Iran nuclear deal.

“I think a 10-year-old tape of a private conversation with a TV talk show host ranks pretty low on their hierarchy of concerns.” (See this Huffington Post article for these references.)

Perhaps the most horrifying thing is that Reed may be right. Recent surveys show that 80 percent of evangelicals support Trump, and if the last sixteen months have not given them cause to withdraw that support, I’m hard pressed to think that this latest moral horror will. Indeed, reporters are already reporting the inevitable “that’s how men talk” rationalization is being circulated. (For the record, that’s NOT how men talk. That’s how morally arrested misogynists talk. If Trump wasn’t rich and famous he’d merely be a dirty old man with straw hair and an orange hue.)

All this leads me to ask the question: should I continue to call myself an evangelical? The term has had baggage for a long time. In his book What’s so Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey recalls that whenever he would ask people to give their response to the word “evangelical” they would reply with impressions like “judgmental” and “anti-abortion” and “anti-gay.” Not once, he noted, did folks think of love or grace.

Sigh, those were the good old days! Today evangelicals are increasingly known for their uncritical embrace of a hopelessly racist, misogynistic, psychopathic, corrupt, pathologically lying bully. And they’re known for a defense of him and demonization of the Clintons that is so crass it provides a dictionary definition of hypocrisy and moral blindspot. For example, they readily forgive Trump for his brutish actions of a decade ago but they refuse to forgive Hillary Clinton for her husband’s brutish actions of two decades ago. Go figure.

(By the way, I don’t look at the Clintons with rose-tinted glasses. The excerpts of Hillary’s Wall Street speeches that were just published by Wikileaks are damning indeed. Oh Bernie, what could have been!)

So here’s where we are. The term “evangelical” is now so corrupted, so decayed, so rusted-out, and so laden down with the moral garbage and hypocrisy of the last sixteen months, that I suspect it is best that we part ways.

Evangelical? No thanks. Just call me a follower of Jesus.

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Swinburne and Homosexuality: A Response to Jason Thibodeau

Jason Thibodeau offered this comment in response to my article, “Homosexuality, Academic Freedom, and the Swinburne Controversy”:

“A good person, seeing that his worldview has committed him to claiming that a group of people are defective just because of the kind of person that they are attracted to, takes this as a reason to question his worldview. Swinburne, Feser, and others dig in and defend the morally repulsive conclusion.

“I agree that we don’t need arguments like Swinburne’s. But we need to allow people to defend them, if only so that the rest of us have a chance to rebut the morally bankrupt worldview which gives rise to such arguments.”

I’d like to make a few comments in reply. Let’s begin with Jason’s statement that on Swinburne’s view “a group of people are defective ….” The thing to note here is that within a Christian anthropology every person is “defective” or suffers particular disabilities (physical, cognitive, moral, etc.). So it is most emphatically not the case that one particular group is being singled out as defective over-against others.

Second, Jason expresses incredulity to the very idea that disability should be invoked “just because of the kind of person that they are attracted to…” Here Jason seems to object to the very idea that the the kind of persons to which one is attracted might be labelled a disability or dysfunction.

If Jason does object to this very idea, I disagree strongly, and I suspect most other people will as well. This is because we can identify individuals who have attractions to particular persons which are generally viewed as disability or dysfunction. A case in point: pedophiles (aka “minor-attracted persons”) are generally viewed as “defective just because of the kind of person that they are attracted to…” In other words, an adult who is sexually and emotionally attracted to children suffers a disability, one which needs to be treated and managed to ensure they do not act upon it. (Note as well how relatively progressive this is, versus the classic demonization of those who are attracted to children as mere “perverts”. For further discussion of the topic see my “Pedophilia and other unforgivable sins.”)

If a person agrees that pedophiles suffer a disability in virtue of their attraction to particular persons, then one must reject the claim that it is wrong in principle to ascribe disability to those who are attracted to particular persons.

Let me hasten to add that no association is attended here between homosexuality and pedophilia. Those are completely different topics and the historic way they have been blurred together has wrought great havoc and injustice. The only point I’m making here is that the pedophile example illustrates that it is proper (or, at the very least, defensible) to identify particular attractions with a disability.

Now what about the ninety year old man who is only sexually and emotionally attracted to 20-30 year old young women? (Ahem, I’m looking at you, Hugh Hefner.) That man isn’t a pedophile but he too arguably suffers a disability (e.g. an emotionally stunted character) in virtue of his lack of ability/interest to connect to those with whom he is a proper emotional and sexual complement.

Those like Swinburne who raise natural law arguments against homosexual attraction and thereby refer to it as a disability (or some equivalent) make a similar claim, i.e. that those who are attracted to the same sex suffer a disability in virtue of their lack of ability/interest to connect to those with whom they are a proper emotional and sexual complement (i.e. the opposite sex).

You can disagree with Swinburne and you can present arguments and evidence to support your claim that same sex attraction is not relevantly analogous to the two cases I have noted here. But one thing is clear: by doing so you concede the legitimacy of the general principle to which Swinburne appeals (i.e. that one can suffer a disability in virtue of the type of people to which one is attracted): you only dispute the propriety of his specific application of that principle.

Finally, let me say a word about Jason’s reference to Swinburne as holding a “morally bankrupt worldview…” It seems to me that this kind of totalizing and marginalizing rhetoric is unbecoming an academic. Jason may believe Swinburne’s defense of a natural law prohibition of homosexuality is false and harmful just as I believe Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous (or infamous) defense of abortion is false and harmful. But in neither case do I believe it is helpful to totalize the objection by ascribing to one’s interlocutor a “morally bankrupt worldview…” not least because doing so will make it difficult for each side to understand and sympathize with the other.

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Homosexuality, Academic Freedom, and the Swinburne Controversy

Whoa, have things gotten heated among the Christian philosophers recently. It all started a couple weeks ago when esteemed philosopher Richard Swinburne was invited to give an address to the Midwest Society of Christian Philosophers Conference (September 22-24). Swinburne is arguably (or inarguably!) one of the two most influential living Christian philosophers (Alvin Plantinga being the other). And on this occasion the esteemed academic came to deliver a paper titled “Christian Moral Teaching on Sex, Family, and Life.”

Then all hell broke loose.

Okay, that’s probably an overstatement, but the paper did cause offense and fallout like few philosophical papers this side of Peter Singer ever do. The controversy was so great that Michael Rea, President of the Society of Christian Philosophers and previous guest on The Tentative Apologist Podcast, took to Facebook to offer a disclaimer in the wake of the fallout:

This is an extraordinary statement, one which looks to me like a rebuff of one of the world’s leading philosophers after he delivered a paper on a prearranged topic.

So what did Swinburne say that was so offensive? The problem, it appears, is centered on his reference to homosexual orientation as a disability. Here’s an excerpt from the paper:

“having homosexual orientation is a disability – for a homosexual cannot beget children through a loving act with a person to whom they have a unique lifelong commitment. Of course some homosexuals do not want to beget children, but the behaviour of other homosexuals indicates that they clearly do; and a disability is a disability whether or not the disabled person minds about it.” (Click here to read the paper)

The fact is, however, that while the description is neither pastorally sensitive nor politically correct, it is not intended to be. After all, the term is precisely defined and functions within a rigorous argument in a conference paper in academic philosophy. Moreover, it is part of a long history of natural law treatments of homosexuality in the western philosophical tradition.

Needless to say, conservative Christian philosophers have expressed their own dissatisfaction with this quick resolution of the problem, both in response to the poor treatment of Swinburne and, even more importantly, to the implications this has for academic freedom. If Christian philosophers face censure within the Society of Christian Philosophers for articulating a dispassionate philosophical critique of homosexuality, then where can they express those views?

Not surprisingly, Edward Feser provided an excellent response to Rea and the SCP with which I am in broad agreement. There is also an open letter to the SCP on the “Swinburne Controversy” which addresses both the issues of academic freedom and the treatment of Swinburne. It currently has almost one hundred signatories.

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When you can’t believe, the church can do it for you

Yesterday while I was doing the Run for the Cure I listened to Krista Tippett’s interview with author and pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. While the whole conversation is worth a listen, I was particularly intrigued by Bolz-Weber’s comment about the corporate nature of prayer and faith.

In this excerpt she begins by noting that the call to pray for others can be shared corporately within the body of Christ. Thus, for example, imagine that I’ve been deeply hurt and offended by an individual. While I sense a conviction to pray for that individual I still find myself unable to do it given the raw nature of the offense. In that case Bolz-Webber suggests that I can appeal to a fellow congregant to pray for that individual, in essence, praying vicariously, in my place.

That’s an intriguing concept, but Bolz-Weber then pushes it further by suggesting that the same principle can be extended to matters of faith and confession. In short, when the creed is confessed, if I find myself doubting a section of that creed, others can vicariously believe for me.

While that’s my summary, nothing beats getting the original exchange, so here it is:

http://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Interview-excerpt.mp3

I am sympathetic with the general points that Bolz-Weber is making here. In particular, I think she is dead on to point out that individualism in the body regarding creedal confession creates enormous problems. Thus, when a person finds themselves doubting one or more confessions in the creed, they find their entire faith being called into question. The solution is not to walk away from faith, nor is it to engage in a case of bad faith by faking it. Rather, the solution is to be honest with one’s own doubts but to realize that at those points one’s faith can be carried vicariously in virtue of the beliefs of others within the community of faith.

Finally, I think we need to distinguish between the doubter who does not want to believe and the doubter who does want to believe. Last week I wrote some articles critical of United Church minister Gretta Vosper who is proudly and unabashaedly atheistic. In this case, vicarious belief would not work because Vosper rejects theism altogether. But this is a world of difference from the congregant who wants to believe: “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) In that case where the honest doubter wants to believe and wants to remain part of the community, I would think the phenomenon of vicarious belief shared by the community of faith would be a fitting response to instances of doubt.

In short, when you can’t believe, the church can do it for you.

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Ran for the Cure 2016

Thanks to all those who donated to our fundraising efforts for the Run for the Cure. My daughter Jamie and I were the top fundraisers at her junior high school with a grand total of $767!

The run happened yesterday morning. It was a beautiful sunny (but chilly) October morn with thousands running to make cancer history. So I asked, you generously donated, and we ran.

Now the heroes of medical research will take that money to the front lines as they work to make cancer history.

Peace!

 

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Move Over Jesus, Here Comes Donald Trump

Some of Trump’s evangelical Christian voters are not only crude and offensive, they’re now verging into idolatrous worship.

Seriously…

 

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The Problem of Evil Explained in terms of Belgian Strong Dark Ale

It’s an age-old objection to Christian faith, one which has presented a stumbling block for many on their journey to faith. The objection is often put in the form of a three step argument:

(1) If God exists then Belgian strong dark ales will be low calorie.

(2) Belgian strong dark ales are not low calorie.

(3) Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

The argument is logically valid, and the second premise is undoubtedly true.

But what about the first premise? It seems to me that this premise assumes that God could not have morally sufficient reasons to pack excess calories into a dark ale. But I think there is good reason to question that assumption.

For example, God might include high calories in Belgian strong dark ales to force those who drink them to undertake cardiovascular exercise to work off those calories. The additional health benefits that would result from this exercise regime would thereby be sufficient to justify the high caloric content.

And so I conclude that the high caloric content of Belgian strong dark ales does not provide a good objection to the existence of God.

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The Irrationality of Conversion: Christianity and Atheism compared

Many atheists like to highlight what they view as crazy Christian conversion stories. For example, The Atheist Missionary referenced this testimony from Eric Metaxas which is based on a dream that he went on to interpret as a divine revelation.

Here’s what’s so puzzling about this. Speaking anecdotally (after all, that’s what we’re doing here), I have not found atheist conversion testimonies on the whole to be more “rational” than this. On both sides, the norm appears to be a penetrating “Eureka” moment that yields a new insight (or so it is believed) into the nature of reality.

Here’s a sample (fictional) account from “Dave” which represents many similar stories that I’ve heard over the years:

I grew up in the church. My dad was the pastor, so I had to. At first it meant a lot to me. I loved Jesus and I was going to change the world. But then dad cheated on my mom with the church secretary. I had to sit there and listen to her cries as my dad told her it was “God’s will”. He moved out two weeks later and started a new church. That first night after he left I prayed to God to bring him back. But the only thing I heard was silence. By the time the sun rose the next morning I knew it was all false.

An objective listener might reasonably wonder how Dave believes that a night of unanswered prayer provides the evidence sufficient to “know” Christianity is false. But do you think Dave would ever get pressed on the rationality of his conversion by his “skeptic” friends? Not likely.

Oh yeah, but let’s point a finger at Eric Metaxas.

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Why shouldn’t I just kill myself? A physicist replies

For many years Krista Tippett’s program “Speaking of Faith” (2003-2010) / “On Being” (2010-today) on NPR has been one of my favorite radio/podcast shows. So it is rather stunning that after writing close to 3000 blog articles I still have never engaged with the show.

Well, better late than never.

In this 2014 episode Tippett interviews physicist Brian Greene. While there is a lot of interesting material in this conversation, I’m going to focus here on Greene’s treatment of the question of meaning. Greene recalls first encountering the question of suicide as a young man reading Camus:

“The choice to live or die. That’s the only question that ultimately matters. And, you know, when I read that I was quite young and it was almost kind of a shocking sentence to read, but it also seemed to me right. I mean, that is the only question that ultimately matters to the individual, but then as I got older, I began to see things a little bit differently, because to me, the question of whether life is worth living, to me, is intimately dependent upon what life is and what reality is, because ultimately your life is lived within reality.

“So to me, the question of whether there are three dimensions or 10 dimensions is so captivating that it does impact my desire to live. And again, I don’t mean that in some melodramatic sense. If tomorrow we established that there are three dimensions in space, I’m not going to sort of jump off the Empire State Building. But what I mean, is that these questions about the rock bottom structure of reality do inform my life. They are not esoteric scientific issues that I leave in the office when I go home at night. And it’s that distinction that ultimately struck me as not as accurate as it might be in his writings.”

Note that Greene responds to the question of whether he should kill himself by pointing to the fact that he is captivated by new discoveries about the nature/structure of the universe. In short, I should not kill myself because I find new natural discoveries fascinating.

The simple point I would want to make in reply is that this is a desperately thin response to the suicide question as it is limited to the subjective and relative. And for those reasons it is a wholly inadequate response to the question of suicide.

To begin with, note that we can respond to the question of suicide by way of subjective or transsubjective considerations. According to the subjective approach, the question of suicide is answered internally relative to my personal interests as a subject of experience. I don’t need to look beyond myself to answer the question.

By contrast, on the transsubjective approach, the question of suicide can only be answered definitively by looking beyond the self and considering additional facts such as one’s social commitment to others or, at a higher level, one’s relationship to the good or obligation to one’s creator.

Greene answers the question within the realm of the subjective, by looking to his own personal satisfaction at making new discoveries. And this is a very thin and unstable approach. What happens on the days when the subject is in a bleak stretch in which the discoveries of science no longer satisfy? Is there nothing that transcends the subject’s satisfaction which can ground the rationale for ongoing existence?

Greene’s answer is also distressingly relativistic. It should be no surprise that a scientist will invoke new scientific discoveries as a motivation for continued existence just as an artist might invoke new aesthetic experiences or a mountain climber might invoke new climbing experiences or a soldier might invoke new combat situations. (For the soldier example, watch The Hurt Locker, and note in particular the iconic cereal aisle scene that precedes Sergeant Williams James’ return to Iraq.)

Does this appear troubling yet? It should. Let’s continue by considering some more possible responses. A hedonist might invoke new sexual experiences, a thief might invoke new theft experiences, a serial killer might invoke new murders.

Is that it? Do we all simply refer to ourselves and our personal interests?

Let’s say that Greene agrees this is woefully subjective and relativistic and so he concludes that the good of discovering nature is a transsubjective good. This may be adequate to sustain him on the weeks when such discoveries are no longer personally satisfying. But unless he invokes additional transsubjective criteria he will lack a basis to challenge the pursuits of the hedonist, thief, and serial killer.

Finally, let’s close with a couple additional questions for the view that scientific discoveries provide a transsubjective good.

First, what basis is there to think that this good — that of making new discoveries of nature — is transsubjective?

Second, Greene’s view seems to be based on a realism about scientific theorization. That is, scientific discoveries answer the suicide question because they provide a truer picture of the world.

But what about scientific non-realists or pragmatists (i.e. those who believe that scientific theories are useful for predicting phenomena but not for describing reality)? Haven’t they thereby denied the good on which Greene answers the suicide question? And if that’s the case, does it follow that Greene’s will to live is intertwined with his ability to defend scientific realism?

Once again, that seems to be a very tenuous basis on which to justify one’s ongoing existence.

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