Christian Radio Review

Albert Mohler:On Marriage

2008-11-13T23:12:00.001+01:00

The last weeks and months I've been quite busy. And right now I'm catching up on the shows that Albert Mohler sent before. I just listened to "What Did Proposition 8 Mean for the Same-Sex Marriage Debate?".

He opposes Same-Sex Marriage and is happy that proposition 8 passed . - No surprise.

What was really telling about this show of his was that it clearly outlined that there is a deep difference on the perception of marriage between conservatives in liberals in America and between Americans and Europeans. This was made clear when a lady called and asked him for his point of view on granting civil unions to homosexual and straight couples and leave marriage open to the Churches and religions.

His argument against is was that it would remind him a bit of the former Soviet Union or of those East Block countries, since he had some Polish friends who first had to marry before the state and then in Church. I wonder whether Dr. Mohler also has French or German friends... because this 'double marriage' wasn't a peculiarity of communism or socialism. France, as well as Germany (and many other European countries) do it just the same way. Before you marry in church you also go in France and in Germany to the town hall to have a marriage ceremony over there. Which means you first get married in a worldly manner with worldly rights and duties and then (if you are religious) you go to Church where you enter into that covenant in a religious manner with religious rights and duties.

If you've grown up with this system it really makes sense to you. Why would a marriage closed by the state have religious entanglements? And if you are religious, wouldn't it lower the holy status of a marriage ceremony if it would be about alimony and custody issues too?

I also believe that Dr. Mohler is befooling himself if he thinks a marriage in a muslim perspective equals a marriage in christian perspective. I mean I could now create my own new, religion call it "Rujiklonerastrovernism" and declare Dr. Mohler and outgoing President George W. Bush married according to its rules. And I guess both of them and the state wouldn't care the least about this marriage, my religion or whether I perceive them married according to it or not.
Why should it be different for marriages that Dr. Mohler declares in his Church according to Christianity in a baptist tradition? I don't really know what entanglements come with such a marriage, but I suppose he and the one who would want to get married by him know. So it's just an issue between those 3 persons and their common imaginary friend.

When it comes to state issues like forming unions between two persons I trust state officials to do this. I wouldn't trust them to hand out religious blessings just as less as I would trust Dr. Mohler to hand out driving licenses. And since those unions are very meaningful, even to the secular community, I deem it very appropriate to have them in ceremonial settings - both when it's in the city hall and (if wished) in the Church. The room in which marriages are entered is normally about the most representative they have at the city halls in France and Germany. (I haven't seen one in Poland yet).

Why am I moral?

2008-09-03T23:48:00.006+02:00

On a blog that I recently visited I was asked where I, as an atheist, take my morals from. This questions also contains in my opinion the question why one should be moral if (s)he does not have to fear Judgment Day.
The concrete question was, why I would not eat my grandmother. The answer to this question lies within self-interest. My wealth and my well-being depends on the fact that I live in a society that is based upon common rules that make a civil interaction between people possible. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant has put the rule of morality very good in his categorical imperative:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become universal law."

So, why would an atheist live according to that rule. The reason is quite simple: It is the only logical way to have a moral society. Just if everyone in a society acts according to principles that he or she could want to become universal laws you can have a moral society.

So far to answer why I would be moral. But I do not deem this answer sufficient because yet I have not laid out what my maxims that I would will to become universal law are. For this I made this little drawing above. My moral actions are ruled by 3 principles: Humanism, utilitarianism and hedonism.
A moral action is an action that makes it to one of the levels that are shown in the sketch. Therefor if you remove the pillars of Humanism for example the action would not be moral at at. It could comply with the rules of utilitarianism or hedonism as much as possible, if Humanism would get violated I would not deem the action moral at all.
So what do those -isms mean:

Hedonism:
Hedonism judges the moral validity of an action by the pleasure it brings. If I go to my wardrobe and decide what shirt I should put on my choice would normally be ruled by the question what shirt I like this day most.
Platon's criticism of Hedonism was: "That it brings pleasure to scratch yourself when it itches, does not give any moral value to scabies."

therefor I need a second moral principle on which to ground Hedonism which is

Utilitarianism:
Utilitarianism judges the moral validity of an action by the overall utility of its outcome. Therefor I might get some short lived pleasure by getting myself infected with an athlete's foot and then scratching myself, but the overall outcome would be that negative that this action would at least not be advisable. If I return to my example with the wardrobe: When I want to go shopping by bicycle and I choose what I should wear during this, my choice would not just be governed by Hedonism but also by Utilitarianism: I would try to choose colors with which I can be easily seen. The question whether I would choose lime-green or bright yellow or a screaming red would again be a matter of taste and therefor Hedonism.

Humanism:
Humanism is the basis of my moral judging. And it has to be. Humanism as the basis forbids against seeing other humans as means to a purpose and not as purpose for all means. There are two axioms that describe very well what Humanism is:

1st: Everyone has the right to live.
2nd: Human Dignity is inviolable.

Humanism is necessary to explain why it is despicable that Stalin killed and mistreated millions of people for the sake of his revolution. On a purely Utilitarian basis this would have been tenable if the projected outcome would have just been good enough.
Just with Humanism you have a basis on which to condemn to make human beings means of your purposes.

The question that remains now and is often asked by theists is: How does an atheist base his or her Humanism.
There are two answers to this. Firstly if I do not want to be made a mean of someone else's purpose then I also can not make others means of my purposes. Secondly there is also historic experience (3rd Reich, Stalinist Communism) who have shown that in systems that lack Humanism the customs will brutalize very quickly.

AMP: Hanging up on Dagmar Herzog

2008-07-31T01:21:00.000+02:00

My former partner who lives in London once asked me, if Doctor Mohler doesn't know this blog. After I showed him my blog and he had a look at Doctor Mohlers blog he realized that he never mentioned me. And this is true. A couple of my questions have already been read by him or Russel Moore on an "Ask Anything Wednesday" but he never mentioned or dealt with his critics on his program. (And I hope that I am not his only one).
Does that mean that he doesn't know me or my blog? Most likely he knows me and my blog. I might be a harsh critic when it comes to him and his program (at least I hope to be) but I respect the rules of fairness when it comes to an intellectual debate over the Internet: I keep him, or better his team, informed about any article I post on his program. After some articles (those in which I called him Comrade Mohler for his idea of allying with the Far Left) Google-Analytics which I use to get statistics about the use of this website, showed visits from Louisville, Kentucky where his show is located.
The reason that he doesn't mention me is a different one, and as I listened a lot to his programs I suppose it is this: The show is about Intelligent, Christian Conversation. Whether the listener perceives this program up to intelligent should be up to him but this isn't the point. The two other words are more important to understand this program: Christian and Conversation. It is the goal of Albert Mohler over everything else to save souls. I remember that in one of the first shows by him I listened to he spoke about one appearance on TV in which he more or less said that the debate was secondary to him and his main goal was to get the Christian message out. He bragged about that he had to wait until the host used the name "Jesus Christ" in order for him to introduce that even the host can not even say this name without acknowledging that Jesus is Christ. Totally out of place, and I guess quite a frustrating experience for the host, but soundly what Doctor Mohler is about.
The word Conversation seems pretty clear. It is when two or more persons talk together. But especially when it is used on Christian Radio it has a further connotation. Then the word also implies that it is a friendly Conversation in opposite to a Debate in which two different ideas confront each other. The whole program might be conversational in so far as two or more persons talk but it is pretty much mono-directional when it comes to the message.
For this reason he would not endorse me on his show by mentioning my blog. I guess one thing that was either said by him or on the Way of the Master program describes his attitude towards engaging with other world-views well: I would not allow a bad preacher to preach in my church but I would always follow the invitation to preach at a bad preachers church. I am fine with this and I am always surprised when looking at those statistics how many people find my blog by searching for criticism of Christian Radio on Google.

That was a really long preface to open this blog article. But I deem it necessary to understand why I am in retrospect in some aspects surprised and it some aspects not how the show went.
I was really surprised that they had a guest on that didn't agree with most of what is said on this program. If it would have been just a usual program in which someone who is supposingly an expert on a matter of Christian life talks with Dr. Mohler or Dr. Moore it would have just been one of the less interesting standard programs. When after a couple of minutes it was clear that there was a sound dissent between the host and the guest I got really intrigued.
I can give Dagmar Herzogs point of view as far as the short but very interesting excerpt from her Book: Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics allows me to. She is a vocal and witty critic of the anxiety that many feel towards sexuality caused by a combination of the influence of the Christian Right and the influence of the recent sexual revolutions around issues like Viagra and the constant lure of Sexuality. The conversation could have been quite a classical one if they would have focused on the second part of what Prof. Herzog thinks causes all this anxiety about sex. But then again I think that she underestimated the anxiety that conservative Christians towards sexuality. In this sense it proved her point almost perfectly when Dr. Moore hang up on her.
At this point I ask my readers to realize that they edited quite some things she said out and that the show that you find on the site right now does not have anymore the point in it at which Dr. Moore hung up on her. I listened to it live on the web as it happened and it could be that my memory betrays me, but as I remember she was talking quite technically when the conversation with her was ended.

I agree with Dagmar in so far as I also believe that the sexually loaded environment can raise our expectations of sex so far that we won't be satisfied anymore with the sex we have. In so far as I can extrapolate the point she wanted to make it is very true that the abstinence only campaign of the political right in the United States contributed largely to the anxiety that many people feel towards sex.
Human beings are also sexual beings. Sexuality is a big part of what and who we are. I was raised in Germany in an area that is predominately Catholic. Catholicism, a religion that embraces celibacy and abstinence only, is a good example how much anxiety it creates to suppress your sexuality. In the course of this your whole environment will get sexualized beyond the point it is. There was this story once told to me about this nun, who just allowed the girls in the Catholic school she was leading to wear white shoes since every other color would be sexually arousing to men around.
Over here in Germany I can not fully imagine how it is to live in a country that advertises abstinence only on a larger scale. I can just speculate what it would be like. Coming in combination with an already sexually charged world around me I would feel really pressed to find the right partner, since this partner will be the only one I could ever experience sex with. A sex that I would expect to hope to be as good as the one shown in all the culture around me. That would cause me a lot of stress, anxiety towards sex and frustration if the sex I one day get isn't quite as perfect as the world around me shows.

I agree with her that the images of sex around us raise our expectation of sex to a level that isn't healthy or normal anymore. I also don't think that the approach of the Christian Right helps to lower this anxiety. In some very unexpected way it makes it even worse. Until I listened somewhat longer to Christian Talk Radio I never got the idea that the union of a man and a women represents the union of Jesus and his Church. That is already quite weird. Adding to this that the act of sexual intimacy symbolized the intimacy between Jesus and his Church is seriously deforming a wonderful shared experience. To make out of this wonderful intimate experience a sacred, perhaps even ceremonial, act is deeply sick.

>From those things I read about Prof. Herzog I suppose I also disagree with her on some points. I'm not afraid of sex and I also don't think it needs to be perfect but other than she I tend to also have a functional view on this issue. Sex is a wonderful intimate experience but it can also be a good mean to help you relief stress, to build self-esteem and to overcome a mild depression. If you choose to have sex for the three last mentioned points you should just make sure that your partner also does not expect more out of it. As long as you have this sex safe (condoms, since just those also protect from STDs and not just from pregnancies) it can be a wonderful as well as helpful experience.

If you are now appalled by this confession of mine, I ask you to turn again to this Program I was writing about. If you host a radio program and you invite a guest in, you should know what this guest wants to say beforehand. If you don't know this exactly you are running with the risk the he or she might say something that doesn't really please you. But cutting him or her out, wasting by this their time and don't letting them make their point is exceedingly rude and morally wrong. I would advise Dr. Moore to listen again to the program of last Thursday in which they praised and proclaimed the virtue of chivalry. In my opinion it makes no moral difference whether you do that to a woman or to a man, but if he is in accordance with what was said on the program he sits in last Thursday, then an even higher amount shame should be upon him. He wasn't even host enough to thank his guest for her appearance at the end of the show.

I at this place want to thank Prof. Herzog for her quick reply after this show in which I asked her whether Dr. Moore really hung up on her during the program.

Learn a foreign language

2008-07-10T20:55:00.000+02:00

Barack Obama is absolutely right to demand of his fellow citizens to learn a foreign language. But I he is not necessarily right for the reasons he mentioned. Very few Americans need to speak a second language for their trip to Europe. From this point of argumentation his point was somewhat elitist.
The reason that it is very useful in our modern world to speak at least one other language is that the world become much smaller with the rise of the Internet. While Germany was thousands of kilometers away just 2 decades ago, now almost every part of the world is just one mouse-click away. While you needed to board a plan and travel for several hours to get involved with a different language and a different culture you nowadays just need to switch on your computer and visit the chatrooms of other nations. For the same price you pay for talking to people from your nation.

I see the Internet as the great opportunity of the 21th century. While in the decades that lay behind us the public forum was limited to the local districts and by national media in some way to the nation as itself, the public forum will become global by the rise of the Internet.
If the people of over the world will be able to talk to each other, ideas will start to cross borders in a pace they never did before. And that is a good thing. As long as we are talking we won't fight. My biggest hope that I place into the Internet is that it will crush the prejudices by which we perceived other nations for centuries. And there are deep differences between the differences that are around within the different language communities. The German speaking nations have a prevalent set of ideas that is distinct from the ideas in the French speaking nations, which are again different from the ideas in the English speaking nations.
There is this illusion of being international in the English speaking world, caused by the fact that so many people in so many nations speak English. You know your nation, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and so on and see that all those western nations are all that similar in culture and nationally prevalent ideas. What is then commonly done is that this experience from the English speaking world is extrapolated to other modern non-English-speaking nations in Europe or Asia.
By the difference of language the flow of ideas is interrupted. There might be an idea that catches within the English speaking community that never catches within the French speaking community simply because it never got translated. On the other hand: The might be other ideas prevalent within the French speaking community that a not common within the English speaking one. Ideas that might impede the rise of ideas that were translated into French.
Getting to know a different language community is something that is personally very beneficial, but also something that might be necessary in the world to come.

As it stands now ideas flow better from Europe to America than vice versa - why? Because Europeans can engage into political debates in America. How many Americans could engage by writing a foreign language blog in the political/social debates in France or Russia?

I can engage into a political debate with English speaking people. When I do it, then in the hope to get humanist and social-democratic ideas to flow over the Atlantic into the American debate. When it comes to translating the ideas of the Evangelical Right back into German than I can just say: Ich werden den Teufel tun, evangelikal-konservativ politische Ideen ins Deutsche zu übersetzen.
I simply won't harm my own political aims by helping opposed ideas to catch in Germany and I guess you never expected that. If you would want your ideas to catch over here, you would have to do the work of translating them and arguing for them in a foreign language yourself.

Animal Rights

2008-06-30T01:29:00.000+02:00

Some news about me: I broke my foot last Friday. Which is also the reason I respond to Dr. Mohlers show that late. I went to the hospital to see my grandma. When I left I took the stairs instead of the elevator, because the elevator took somewhat too long and I wanted to do something that's good for my health. Unfortunately I missed the last step of the stairway way, stumbled and distorted my left foot. This way I broke the fifth bone of my middle foot. There in one good thing in this whole accident: There is doubtlessly no better place to break your foot than next door to the department for accident surgery where they could plaster my lower leg.
Thanks to this I will be in hospital again on Thursday. Because the fracture is somewhat complicated they have to implant a metal splint. I hope to be home again on Monday in a week.
I wonder a bit how you put this in a theological perspective. An atheist who breaks his foot seems easy - but an atheist who breaks his foot next door the the department for accident surgery seems a bit indecisive on Gods part.

Why should we grant Rights to animals, what would stop us from doing the same with plants?

Dr. Mohler presented one case for granting Rights to animals in his show. And I don't think he presented the best one. Humans make laws for humans. Even if they are unaware of this fact. For example the protection of the environment. While it obviously protect nature and habitats it also protects human society which benefits greatly from living in an intact natural environment. When it comes to water quality it's obvious, but you shouldn't forget the recreational benefits from having a healthy landscape around you.
While animal Rights seem to protect Animals first and foremost, they also protect our society. As a society we also need compassion for each other. To preserve this compassion should be a very high priority for any society. If someone tortures, mistreats or abuses an animal that shows a great lack of compassion for animals on his or her side. And I seriously doubt that she or he can limit that to her or his treatment of members of the animal kingdom. Attitudes do have consequences. Once people accept the mistreatment of animals, who are able to show their pain and agony, it's not to unlikely that they will one day even mistreat humans in the same way.
That's where I also see the difference between mistreating animals and mistreating plants. Plants don't show their pain and agony (if they feel any). Animals do show those emotions. Especially the great apes do that and someone who is willing and able to mistreat those animals or is unwilling to show any compassion to those is a danger to the public order.
Dr. Mohler might laugh at the idea of outlawing great apes in circuses and television, but I see the logic behind all of this. Showing those animals in this fashion at some point dehumanizes them. The behavior of apes shown in circuses or television is in most cases anything but indicative of their natural behaviors. If someone acts in a ridiculous way he is said to act like a monkey. While monkeys and great apes very rarely act this way when behaving according to their nature. The whole dehumanizing insult of acting like a monkey or an ape would loose its effect if apes and monkeys would be shown how they naturally live.

Btw. 2 things

Firstly: Yes, the government of José Luis Rodrigues Zapatero did away with a lot of the conservative elements that Spain was known for. That's because Spain is a very young democracy and it is now just about 30 years ago that Spain was ruled by the fascist dictator Franco. With this time passed between to old regime and the new republic we see the Spanish society cleansing itself from the last influences of that period. I wonder why Dr. Mohler didn't mention the regime of Franco when I lauded the former conservative values of Spain... Maybe because the period of Franco, which is stained in blood, is perhaps the best example how much Christians can become complicit in an inhumane dictatorship.

Secondly: Albert Mohler seemed somewhat afraid that lawyers could be up to define a new case law by forcing precedences. That fear might be true for the anglo-american world. Not for continental Europe. Even thou a lot of my fellow citizens who are influenced by how Hollywood presents the court system (which is then by nature an anglo-american one), case-law is alien to continental Europe. That means for example that the equivalent of a county court in Germany can rule explicitly against the decisions made by higher courts. Our courts are bound to laws made by the legislator, which say have to interpret. In doing so they are free from former decisions. The only thing a judge who rules against the decision made by higher courts is that his decisions will most likely be nullified.

No further argument against polygamy?!

2008-06-18T00:37:00.000+02:00

Dr. Mohler claimed on his program that with the advent of gay-marriage there won't be any rational hold against polygamy. I wonder whether he really believes that, because there is a very good rational hold against polygamy that has to do with the fact how human beings relate to each other.
So lets have a look at heterosexual polygamy. I've drawn a little sketch to visualize the problems that come along with such a relational triangle.

I analyze the relation between a man and several women, because that was what polygamy was during most of recorded history.

In order to be in love for a heterosexual the person of desire needs to be of the opposite sex. (Which is the definition of heterosexuality). That means that in the relationship triangle between three heterosexuals there can just be love between the women and the man. Between both women there can be in the best case close friendship.
Let us supposed those three persons met the women fell in love with the man and the man vice versa with both women.

It is unimaginably hard if not impossible to love two persons the same way. The man will have extremely hard problems to feel the same burning desire for both his women for an extended period of time. Even if he achieves to do so, it will hard in the same unimaginable way to show that love to both women equally.

Remember we started this example with the supposing that it is the best case - both women being close friends. How long can a friendship survive this situation? At one point one woman will ask herself the question whether he doesn't love the other wife more. Whether she isn't really wife No.2. In the moment she begins to wonder whether she really is wife No.2 it's just natural that she will test how close her husband is to her. Her best friend on the other hand must in this case believe that she is breaking the basis for their polygamous relationship by trying to be a better wife to him than she is. Which will start a competition between both. A competition driven by jealousy that can lead nowhere but into open or hidden animosity between both females.

The man on the other hand could try to moderate this competition. But would he really have any reason to do so? Having to women who compete for your affection is quite flattering. It also brings him into a situation of power that is hard to resist.
Remember that this is the best case of such a relationship. In a much worse case those women will already join this marriage with a sense of jealousy and competition. In this case the marriage is more or less just about a man being in the center of a competition between two women.

I'm at this point fully a humanist who believes that human dignity is inviolable. In the worst case the dignity of both women gets violated from the beginning. I the better case it is highly likely that it will get violated within the course of the 'marriage'.

If people want to give such a triangle a try against all odds against it, they may do so - but they shouldn't accept a broader society to sanction such a relationship.

Let's move a bit further from the social standard and lets consider whether it would be then permissible to sanction polygamies between bisexual or homosexual people.
You can not ignore that it has different starting points than a heterosexual triangle. With a homo- or bisexual triangle you could really have love between all partners.

At this point I will return to my prior argument - that it is impossible to love two persons the same way AND to show this affection the same way. In an homo- or bisexual triangle you would have the great risk of having a strong love developing between two of the partners and smaller ones towards the 3rd partner in the relationship. I would predict that he or she is kicked out of the relationship triangle sooner or later - or - that he or she becomes a kind of replacement partner with whom you have intercourse when the other partner has migraine.

Also in such a situation I see the strong risk that the dignity of at least one person in the relationship gets violated and therefor I wouldn't want to see it sanctioned as well. If people want to try this social experiment they should very well do so. But they shouldn't expect me to agree to it.

The End of all times

2008-06-14T01:44:00.000+02:00

When you talk to people from other worldviews its quite often quite hard to realize how poorly they understand your position. When it comes to the End Times there is a strong and undeniable dividing line between those who stand on an atheist standpoint and those on a religious one.
He is right in analyzing that the world even in an atheist view has an end. To the biosphere as we know it with the next big meteor impact, to the solar system with the inevitable end of the sun and the slow death of the universe that will expand forever and in this course have ever and ever lower energy densities.
When it comes in this universe to the fate of mankind I'm optimist. I believe that mankind will solve the current social and environmental problems on this planet, will survive the meteor impacts to come and finally even escape from this solar system the time the sun will die. Undeniably mankind in such a distant future will be a biologically different species from what it is today. By natural selection our genes will change and our bodies adapt to ever and ever changing environment. But whatever happens, as long as the descendants of homo sapiens will survive - and might it be in some form of artificial intelligences that are beyond our current technological imagination - our culture, our memes as Dawkins called them will persist. They will be newly perceived, newly interpreted but even if our modern thoughts will be just the very lowest basis of a future human culture - they will survive. The ones after us will find new suns who will warm them and spend them energy for a further couple of billion years until also those sources of energy run dry. Afterwards they might be able to find energy close to neutron stars, but eventually one day even those sources will dry up. At this time I believe the ones after us will merely be highly intelligent machines with artificial intelligences beyond the capacity of our modern day brain. As such they will be able to save energy by simply running slower.
For the last of a long line of descendants of homo sapiens time will begin to run, as they begin to slow down more and more. In a universe in which there isn't really anything to see anymore they will see the millennia and millions of years flying buy until one day they will also run out of energy with a final thought into eternity.

Now that I laid out my escatology in a nutshell, lets see how it is different from the Christian escatology. Dr. Mohler said to be fulfilling life, all of life, needs to have a beginning and needs to have an ending just as a good story needs to have. From an atheist position we tell our lives like stories, but this universe isn't a story. It is. It's without a narrator - without a narrative. If there is ever anyone to make it into a narrative than it's by some future technology, some future power mankind or another extraterrestrial civilization.

Yes, the atheist way to view the world means that all the wrongs of the past won't be made right. The only wrongs we can make right are the wrongs of the future by avoiding them. To be able to do that, we need to understand this world in an unbiased way. We need to respect the human being

and we need to realize that ideas do have consequences.
Just like the idea that the end of all times is a thing to long for.

That is what makes atheists afraid of Christian escatology. In the centuries before us it was a mindset of constant waiting, that itself was already quite depressing. But at the moment this old believe that the end of times is something to long for gets into a toxic mixture with a very typical American way of impatience. When especially Christians talk about bring about the end of times by nuclear war - than this in plain scary.
I wish Dr. Mohler would have taken as much time to scold those Christians who feel entitled to accelerate the coming of the apocalypse as he took to scold atheists for their beliefs.

When it comes to the apocalypse the difference between religious people and atheists is that atheists (at least all of who I know) would do anything to avoid it, the religious seem to long for it.
If you believe that this world and what we can make out of this world is the best we will ever have, the idea that the end of this world is something good is genuinely scary.

As Dr. Mohler knows and agrees to: Ideas do have consequences.

The Human Embryo and Dignity

2008-05-06T18:23:00.001+02:00

When are human beings protected under the Right of Human Dignity?
When do they have a right to live?

Those are important questions that face everyone of us as soon as we come to the question of embryonic stem cell research. In yesterdays program Albert Mohler and his guest Prof. Robert George pointed out that they see the human being fully protect worthy from conception until death.

I disagree with Dr. Mohler and Prof. George on the beginning on the worthiness of protection. And to point out why I will turn out to the end when a human being is considered especially worthy of protect: Death.
The whole western world considers a person to be dead as soon as all brain activity cedes. With the death of the brain, the human mind is (from a secular point) irreversibly destroyed. Apart from this point there is no consciousness, no feelings anymore, no thought. The individual has ended his or her existence [in this world if you are religious]. One thing about this death is that while the mind is dead, the body needn't necessarily be.
Did you ever wonder how it is possible to use the organs of a dead person?
Actually dead organs couldn't be used to transplant. The still living body of the brain-dead person is kept alive by artificial respiration and heart stimulation until the needed organs could be extracted. Just when the live maintaining machines that were needed for this procedure are switched off the body will die as well.
This example shows something: The right of human dignity and the right to life are dependent on the unity of the human being. The human being itself is made up from the unity of human mind and body. The human body itself has no special dignity once the mind ceased to exist. Otherwise the apparent use as a mean by harvesting the bodies organs to an end would debase its dignity.

Returning to the human embryo we can ascertain beyond doubt that it is a human body in it's earliest stages. Like Albert Mohlers guest pointed out: The is no serious scientific discussion about that. But as I pointed before: The body itself doesn't have dignity, even if alive. Dignity and the Right to Life is granted to the human being, which itself is defined by it's unity of mind and body.
If I look from that standpoint to the embryo in its earliest stages I simply stand to say it has not a single braincell. It is therefor most certainly and most positively brain-dead. The embryo is therefor in no ethical way different from the still living body from the person who was just found brain-dead.

Dr. Mohler, a question at this point, do you want to take your atheist listeners for fools by claiming that the full unity of the human being in the embryo could be argued from any other than a religious standpoint? You necessarily need this obscure concept of some ominous soul to argue a difference between the living body of a brain-dead person and an embryo.
If you argue that the soul leaves the body with the death of the brain and enters it upon conception, there is a theological argument to make that there is a difference between the still living body and the embryo.
On the other hand: What verse actually describes when the soul enters and leaves the human body?

Another secular difference between the embryo and the "undead" body is that the embryo still has full potency for life while the only potency the "undead" body has is for death. But there is one important necessity for an embryo to grow into a human being: That gets implanted in a womb. It is medically impossible at the moment and will stay medically impossible for a very long time for a human embryo to grow into a human being in any other place than the womb of a woman. Outside the womb the embryo has the potency of growing into specialized clumps of cells, but never into a human being.
The act in which the mother allows an embryo to nest in her womb starts the growing of an embryo into a human being. That is also the point from which on the mother gives the right chemical environment and nutrition to the embryo to fully grow into a human being. In other words the point from which on the embryo is really given life from its mum. The implantation is the moment when a promise between the mother and the embryo takes place in which she in or without awareness of the act ensures the embryo to it grow into a human being.
At this point the pregnancy starts and any interference with that would be an abortion. With the developing mind there are rights of the embryo and fetus to be protected. I will tackle that in a later article.

AMP: Environmentalism and Human Dignity

2008-05-05T14:06:00.000+02:00

When reading an article of Dr. Mohler I often find myself agreeing on the issue but not on the reasoning. Just like in his latest blog on Plant Rights, Screaming Vegetation, and a "Biocentric" Worldview. This article of him is also quite good to explain my worldview on human dignity. It's close to the Christian one but not quite the same.

As a social-democrat human dignity is central to my worldview. It doesn't need to be received by the appreciation as the creation of some God. It's simply axiomatically there. Just like the axioms of Newtonian physics the axiom of of human dignity is set and perceived by experience. After 8000 years of recorded human history we have enough experience what happens if a society ignores the dignity of human beings or makes it somehow conditional on religious dogma.
If you condition human dignity on race (like the Nazis did) or condition it on worldview (like the communists did) you will very soon end up with concentration camps or Gulags.
But to heavily disagree with Dr. Mohler it is anything but safe to reason for human dignity on religious grounds. First of all: Human Dignity on itself is something that is alien to the Christian worldview. The Christian worldview, especially the one of conservative Christians, teachers that humans have no value on dignity on their own, but are on the contrary despicable, evil sinners. If there is an intrinsic dignity of the human being in the Christian worldview it just comes from an transaction of God's dignity onto the human being.
To point this difference, the difference between an intrinsic human dignity and a transacted human dignity, out is not nitpicking. Once you base human dignity on an act of transferal from a divine entity you open the possibility to argue whether this deity give human dignity to any human.
This is not just a theoretical consideration. The believe that Atheists by their rejection of God also rejected the dignity that God assigns to every human being allowed Christians and other religions to persecute Atheists for centuries.

This centrality of human dignity also comes to play when I consider the environment. In a truly humanist worldview you protect nature for the sake of human civilization. Any society benefits largely from living in an eco-system that's intact. To preserve this natural environment doesn't serve foremost nature but mankind. It also means that human societies are allowed to cut down nature of to reduce it in certain areas if it serves a greater good and doesn't cause more harm than it does good. Unfortunately this sane position has been hijacked by some neo-pagans who in worship of mother nature want to protect nature for natures sake and make humans subservient to that worship.

Dr. Mohler is right that putting the nutrition of people at risk for the sake of some zany new-age religion is at it's base inhuman. To see him than argue on the other hand that it's wrong to protect nature for nature's sake but that you should instead protect nature for God's sake seems somewhat strange to me. But it reminds that Social-Democrats and Christians quite often agree on the issue but also disagree quite often on the reasoning.

AMP: Homosexual Marriage

2008-04-24T12:52:00.000+02:00

Should a Christian man who struggles with homosexuality marry a woman?

Albert Mohler was asked this question by e-mail and the reply he gave this "Ask Anything Wednesday" was about the least thoughtful replies he ever gave on a show.
Dr. Mohlers reply was if I may summon it this way: It's OK to enter into marriage once you discover that you are unhappy with your life as a single.

There are many good secular arguments why this advise is bad advise. But I will toss them aside for this reasoning. Not because they aren't valid but I think that biblical reasoning against Dr. Mohlers advise has a higher persuasiveness for you (if you stumble over this article) and because I hope and I expect Dr. Mohler to correct himself once he has read this article.

First: Why am I in any way competent to give an answer to this question? I'm a homosexual myself and for this reason I know how strong the attraction to men for a homosexual man is. I also know what it would mean to have to be intimate with a woman and most important of all for the reasoning: I observed the conservative christian community for more than a year now. I've read the bible. By that I'm able to rationalize Christian ethics as good as very few Christians themselves can.

Marriage isn't primarily about you. Just like anything on this world isn't primarily about you but about the glory of God. Marriage finds it special glory as it represents the relationship between Jesus and his Church in which the Christian Man has to play the role of Jesus and the Christian woman the role of the Church.
This relationship is defined by unconditional love, trust and absolute intimacy. Just as Jesus and his Church are intimate to each other a husband and a wife have to be intimate with each other.
To enter marriage you have to be fully willing to be fully intimate with your wife. When you take your marriage vow in church you also promise your wife to be intimate with her, just like Jesus promised an intimate relationship with his Church.
So let he take your question literally: Should I enter into marriage if I struggle with homosexuality.
- No
That you struggle with homosexuality means that you can't be fully intimate with your wife. The idea of being sexually intimate with a woman is disgusting for me. I can have women as best friends, as colleagues I could even imagine to share an apartment with a woman I call myself. But I couldn't enter into a sexually intimate relationship with her. And if your are struggling with homosexuality and you are honest to yourself you know that you couldn't also be sexually intimate with a women without feelings of repulsion.
When Jesus entered into the intimate relationship with his Church he did that with full love and having this desire to be intimate as he entered the covenant. When you stand in front of that altar and you take this marriage vow you have to do it in love to your future spouse in in the full willingness to be intimate with her. If take this vow not being sure whether you can be fully intimate with your wife, in desire and not in repulsion, you are lying to God, the congregation, to your wife and to yourself by taking this vow.
You also can't do this in the mindset that God will bless you and your marriage in making the sexual intimacy less repulsive to you once you are married. There's a simple word for the mindset that once I enter into marriage the Holy Spirit will change your mind to be able to have a desire for sexual intimacy with a woman: blackmail.
You would also be trying to blackmail God, by saying that he will change you once you enter into marriage. If God wants to heal you from your sexual attraction to men he will do it when he thinks that it's time to do that. If you believe that you can accelerate Gods decision to help you overcome that attraction you are questioning Gods sovereignty.

To summon it up, if you enter into a marriage with a woman while struggling with homosexuality you are:
- lying to God
- lying to your congregation
- lying to your wife
- doubting Gods sovereignty
- You aren't loving your neighbor like you love yourself (because you would never want that someone who feels repulsion at the thought of being sexually intimate with you marries you)

I hope I could dissipate all doubts that it's a really bad idea to marry a woman while struggling with homosexuality based on a Christian worldview.

If this answer contains theological errors I encourage you to write me why it does.
(after all, I'm still an atheist)

AMP: Secular Sunday School

2008-04-23T22:41:00.001+02:00

Dear Readers!

Doctor Mohler made his last show about atheist churches and mentioned that atheists in America had the idea of sending their children to atheist Sunday Schools.
He wondered what in the world such an secular Sunday School would look like. I think I can help his imagination with that. In Germany religious education is taught as a regular subject in all schools. For those students who don't want to be taught religious education there is the subject of Ethik (Ethics)

I found a summary of what is taught in German secular ethics classes and will present it.

(note: First German students are 4 years at elementary schools. I will present the curriculum of a Gymnasium which last 9 further years.

source: http://www.schulfach-ethik.de/ethik/Gymnasium/Klasse_5-13.htm

5th grade:
5.1 Perception and Reality
5.2 Needs and rules
5.3 Freedom, Deciding and Acting
5.4 Playing and learning

6th grade:
6.1 The field of community family
6.2 Me and the others
6.3 Image of humanity and ethics of Judaism and Christianity

7th grade:
7.1 Becoming adult
7.2 Conflict and how to solve them
7.3 Image of humanity and ethics of Islam
7.4 Celebrations and their meaning to society

8th grade:
8.1 Way to find a meaning in everyday life
8.2 Responsibility for yourself and others
8.3 Arguing ethically
8.4 Environmental ethics

9th grade:
9.1 Conscience and acting
9.2 Religious interpretations of the meaning of life
9.3 Gender roles, partnership, family
9.4 Ethics of peace

10th grade:
10.1 Values as Foundation and Aim of human acting
10.2 Conscience and responsibility
10.3 Ethics of peace
10.4 World Religions: Hinduism, China
10.5 Gender roles, partnership, family

11th grade
11.1 Basic positions of philosophical ethics
11.2 Philosophic-ethical interpretations of Humanity
11.3 Philosophy of Religion and World Religions in comparing singular questions
11.4 Medical ethics

12th grade
12.1 Basic questions of philosophical ethics
12.2 Freedom and determination from the viewpoint of different sciences

13th grade
13.1 Joy
13.2 Right and Justice

AMP: The Divorce Industrial Complex

2008-04-07T12:59:00.000+02:00

It seems that Dr. Mohler makes any effort to from this political alliance between the Far Left and the Christian Right. The logical fallacy of the argument from envy and resentment is something I'm more used to hear from the Far Left.
In his latest blog: "The Divorce Industrial Complex" he points out that a whole industry of government officials, lawyers, judges, social security bureaucracy and counselors formed around the divorce issue.
What he fails to argue is why those people don't deserve the money they currently receive by the divorce-system and how he wants to reduce the amount of money they currently receive.
The lawyers and judges are needed to set how much alimony one partner has to pay after a divorce to the other. To be able to judge on that with some sense of justice you have to be an expert in law - and experts cost money. So it's undeniable that the lawyers and judges who rule those trials deserve an appropriate payment.
It really seems that Dr. Mohler thinks that this payment isn't enough... because additional to those trials over alimony, he would also want the partners who want a divorce have a trial over the question of fault. At least that is what his demand for a fault-divorce would end. Shame is disappearing more and more from our societies and therefor I don't believe that many couples would feel a delicacy about washing all their dirty linen in such a trial about the fault of a divorce. Such trials won't just stretch the nerves of judges and lawyers to the extreme, if the marriage wasn't totally wrecked by the beginning of such a trial - in the end it will. The only ones who will maybe have some entertainment will be the people in the audience of such a trial.
The only ones who could really help a marriage in trouble are counselors who help the couple by mediating between both partners and teaching conflict management. For some reason that I don't really understand many people feel less shame about having a court trial to get their marriage ended than to have some counselor come in and help them to learn how to get around with each other. Perhaps it hurts their pride to have to admit that they need help to solve their problems. Pride is one of the worst guidelines for life.
I know that counseling has a very bad reputation within the conservative Christian community. But when I talk about a counselor that needn't be someone with a PhD in psychology. If the partners prefer to be counseled by a theologian with a focus on biblical marriage counseling than that's fine.
The social security bureaucracy also deserves its money. By the time it has to act on behalf of the good of the child the marriage of the parents is already wrecked. That we don't counsel the couple today how to be good parents even when divorced leads them to hold their child as hostage in an alimony trial.
If counselors would teach the parents in an early stage of the divorce how to be parent to their child even after a divorce we could perhaps really save a lot of money on those child care agencies - but for that we would have to get rid of our resentments towards counseling and mediation.

Having the question of fault return to the divorce issue will be no help whatsoever. If one of the spouses is really determined to leave the marriage than no trial over fault will stop him or her. If you want to make it harder to end a marriage than you should force those spouses through a process of mediation. Unlike a court trial, it keeps the dirty linen out of public and doesn't pose the risk to wreck a marriage once and forever.

WOTMR: Spanking Authorities

2008-04-06T22:12:00.000+02:00

In my last blog I wrote that children learn best if they accept their teacher as an person of authority. And I will stand by that even as I'm presented by one of the stupidest means to reinforce authority by 'The Way of the Master'. Namely: Spanking.

Authority stems from character and competence. By his/her character the teacher or parent has to perform his/her role and by the competence reinforce that he/she belongs in that role. Coming from there I have to criticize quite a few behaviors.
One typical error (at least in Europe) is that parents and teachers want to be best friends with their children. They aren't; that's not their role. If by chance you are a parent or a teacher who wants to be best friend with their children / students: Your children already have best friends (at least I hope so). They also need a Mom, a Dad, or a teacher. Yes they won't like you as parent or as teacher as they like their best friends - but on the other hand: they also don't like their best friends as they like their parents and teachers. And especially the teacher has to realize that being liked by everyone isn't necessarily part of his/her job.
So much to the character part. As parent and teacher you also have to show your competence. That means that you don't just tell your children to do something but also explain why you want them to do that. If necessary: Explain why it is good for them.
OK, I couldn't possibly think of any good reason for reading the bible the fifth time - but (Todd) if you would want your children to read it the fifth time than that would be your job to explain.
Furthermore: Parents shouldn't put the competence of the teachers in question. A teacher might be wrong on some points, but as soon as parents start to slander their children's teachers in front of their children they shouldn't be all to much surprised if their child perform even worse at school.

And now: Spanking and Slapping.
Whenever you feel the need to spank or slap your child you should also feel the need to spank and slap yourself. Because apparently you could neither convince your child with your character nor with your competence otherwise. Each time you spank and slap your children you also put your competence into question. To your child you seem unrestrained in the moment you slap it. And maybe it will do as you told your child to do.
But it won't do it because it's convinced that what it has to do is for its own good. That will combine with the feeling of being treated unfairly and by your child just doing something in the mindset that it was blackmailed to do it. So while your child might do what you want it to do, it will do it in a mindset of frowardness - perhaps even thinking that you yourself couldn't even reason your demands and thereby questioning your authority.

Therefor spanking authorities are most of all spanking their own authority.

Does therefor spanking have to be illegal?

Yes, because this encourages that this behavior disappears from our societies. If you just spanked your child once and mildly it will most likely turn out like this: No plaintiff, no judge.
Do you really think your children will run to the courts as soon as they are slapped the first time?
They will do if it becomes a habit and than it is adequate for them to do so. And apart from arresting the parents or fining them (which would also hurt the children) they should be sent into parenting counseling. At least for the first times they come into court for spanking their children.

By the way: Wouldn't Christian parenting courses make great as a program at your local church?

AMP: Good Luck!

2008-04-06T21:11:00.000+02:00

Dr. Albert Mohler (or should I better write Comrade Mohler?) sees the possibility of a political alliance between the groups of the far left of the political spectrum and conservative christians. As he told us last Wednesday, that he doesn't drink alcohol, he doesn't even have a good excuse for such thoughts.

OK, he just sees those common grounds at homeschooling - so fate will most likely spare us of Dr. Mohler performing 'The Internationale'.

How common are those grounds that Dr. Mohler sees with the very left really?

It's true: Also the Very Left (mostly anarchists) likes the idea of homeschooling but it does so to avoid that their children are brought up to be conformist citizens. In this course they want to raise their children as fully autonomous persons who fully enjoy their individualism (As parents they need to have nerves like steel).
The Christian Right wants homeschooling because it wants to fight the non-conformist influences of the public school system on their children. They (other than the Very Left) raise their children to be decals of their parents. It's not of the very first concern of the Christian Right that their children could be discouraged to think on their own. To the contrary: There's nothing more they fear that their children could question the biblical truth when presented with the theory of evolution or unbiblical literature.
I've never heard any proponent of the Christian Right say: I fear that, by the conformist influence of the public school, my child could be discouraged to think for itself.
- But exactly that is the reasoning of the Very Left to homeschool their children.
So while the means are the same - the ends couldn't possibly be more different.

I hope that the Very Left comes to it senses again and realizes that individualism develops from being exposed to several worldviews. To get such an alliance offered should make them start to think.

On the other hand: That they accept this alliance is quite unlikely. In its inability to make compromises the Very Left is nothing short of the Christian Right.

AMP: What marriage should be to the Secular World

2008-04-02T18:12:00.000+02:00

I'm reading and listening with fascination about Dr. Mohlers concerns about marriage. His last article in his blog summons his point of view extremely well. I would like to give to this debate a viewpoint from a secular perspective.

In former times marriage had a great role in the public but it is declining every year. Article 6 of the German Basic Law (The German constitution) clearly states for example: "Marriage and the family shall enjoy the special protection of the state".
This Article also shows where the decline of the role of marriage comes from. The German law states Marriage and family almost as an unity, both inseparable from each other. The birth control pill has done away with that. While in earlier times children were expected to be born soon after a marriage was entered by two persons, today more and more couples stay childless. If there weren't children in a marriage than this wouldn't have normally been because of the choice of the spouses, but because of infertility. Marriage was a certain and the normal way to set children into this world.
That's no more today. Most couples delay childbearing or doesn't have children at all. Also very few unwed men feel obligated to marry their girlfriend anymore once they are informed that she is pregnant.

That marrying couples were soon expected to have and raise children, was the best secular reason to give some kind of special protection to this partnership. Now that no one can really expect a married couple to take on such responsibilities it's hard to justify those special treatments anymore. The only way out of it is a secular redefinition of marriage.
In my view marriage is the covenant between two partners who raise common children or where on partner is expecting to bear a common child, while family are the relationships between those two partners to their children and vice versa.

Just in this definition you could argue a special public interest in keeping the both partners together. It's hard to find any scientific or sociological study, that wouldn't show that children are best raised by their parents. Coming from that point it's quite easy to argue that the public has an interest in ensuring that such a partnership isn't broken easily.
If in a partnership without children one partner leaves the other that's maybe tragic for the partner whose left, but the public has no good interest in keeping both together. What else should others assume than that the partner who left had good reasons to do so? I don't see any good if we let both partners wash their dirty linen in public.
The whole issue becomes very different at the moment children are involved. The well-being of those children is a public interest and it's also in the best interest of the children if the public gets concerned about them. It's hard to grasp what some parents are able to do to their children in the process of a divorce and I seriously doubt the parenting skills of anyone who is able to use his/her children to blackmail the other spouse or to humiliate that person even more. To avoid that I would change the process of divorce radically.
The first step for a couple with children who wants a divorce should be into marriage counseling. Whether those partners want to get counseled by a church or a secular institution should be up to them. Some married partners simply lost the ability to talk to each after years of marriage. Forcing them into such a counseling to get a divorce also forces them to think again about their reasons for a divorce and will prevent marriages from being ended easily. Counseling also has the advantage over a court trial that it isn't about the question whose guilt it is that the marriage failed. I've never heard about a conflict that was solved by finding out who caused it. Maybe in some cases it can help to know the guild but viewing the problems like they are right now and solving them from there is often the best way. Having a court trial on whose fault the end of a marriage is would rather accelerate the process of the breaking apart of that covenant.
If after counseling one or both partners still want to divorce they should be obligated to go into a second counseling. This time not about their marriage but about their children. Even after their divorce both still stay parent to their children and both have to accept that the other partner also stays parent to the child. Just look at the example on what divorced parents do to their children to punish the other partner and you will clearly see that some serious education on how to go through this situation as adults is needed.

I would like to live in a world in which every expressed will is thoughtful and informed, because in this world we wouldn't need either of the counsellings.

Those measurements would in my opinion be much better for the children than the systems that the United States and Germany (in a milder way) have.
But what about the role of God in a marriage that Dr. Mohler sees?
I couldn't care less. If there is a God, and if this God is concerned about those marriages than he should take measurements against those spouses on his own. If there really is a God than it would be an insolent overbearing of the state to believe that he (the state) has to punish or to act on God's behalf.
When it comes to the Church that might be involved in this divorce: That's also not the concern of the state. If this Church throws everyone out who gets divorced: That's their choice. Whether those partners had children or not. You could even have anyone who gets married in your churches sign that he/she has to pay a penalty of X dollars in case of a divorce to the church.

There are marriages from all kinds of worldview perspectives. The state in a pluralistic society should be a neutral agent. Instead of deciding that the Judeo-Christian perception of marriage is the right one and impose it on others, the state should weight legitimate interests of the persons (especially the children involved) against the freedoms of the persons who want the divorce.
The state also shouldn't privilege partnerships between a man and a woman over partnerships of two persons of the same gender. Both forms have the same kind of benefit to the state (happier citizens than if those people would live alone) and it hard to argue that a man shouldn't be allowed to visit his same sex partner in hospital if another man would be allowed to visit his female partner in hospital.

The dividing line between a civil union and a marriage should therefor be common children.

And as long as medical progress doesn't create those challenges or as long as we don't allow same sex couples to adopt children (which is a different debate), we won't need to talk about gay marriage.

Todd Friel: Defintion of the word 'universe'

2008-04-01T23:42:00.000+02:00

Sorry Todd, after praising you in the last article I need to criticize you in this one.

I don't know how deep you studied theology. At least not that deep that you would have gathered any sophisticated knowledge of the Latin language.

the first syllable of universe, rightly comes from the Latin word "uni" which means one.
the second syllable comes from the from the Latin word "vertere" which means "something rotated, rolled, changed" (versum is the perfect passive participle of that word)

therefor the word universe means "everything rolled into one, everything combined into one".

I got this researched this information on Wikipedia and you might want to point your listeners to that link so that they can find the real meaning.

WOTMR: Meditating on Workfare

2008-04-01T21:31:00.000+02:00

The good thing about The Way of the Master is, that I sometimes don't need to listen to the whole program to get two great topics for this blog. Todays topics will be Yoga in elementary school and workfare programs.

First I'll start with the Yoga issue. Todd is more and more concerned about the adaptation of Yoga into the evangelical culture in America. As part of eastern mythologies he sees it as demonic. Of course, - coming from that standpoint - he sees the teaching of Yoga and meditation as state-religion issue. If it were a state-religion issue we atheists would probably be the first to alarm the ACLU and get it out of school.
But it isn't.
Meditation and Yoga are forms of self-hypnosis which are as tools to achieve altered states of the mind used in eastern religions. That doesn't make them religious themselves. That Christians when they meet sit quietly, enjoy church hymns and listen to someone speak, doesn't make it religious to visit a theater or an opera.
But both behaviors bring your mind in a different state. In the first case it's the self-hypnotic nature which does it in the second set the mind is brought into a different that by the illusion of some higher authority present.
The Christian set is already used as a tool in public schools - when students have to sit quietly in class and listen. That the teacher already presents an actual authority doesn't help the students as much to learn as if they, by the set they are in, also unconsciously presume that the teacher is an authority. By our evolutionary predisposition we learn better from persons we presume to be an authority than from others.
Yoga and Meditation on the other hands are great tools to deal with stress. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis can be used for all kinds of things. Just like a hammer can be used for all kinds of purposes. If someone wants to use it to get "in touch" with some God than he will get "in touch" with some God. The imaginary power of our mind is that big that he will even be able to see his God (whatever God he believes in). When we encounter people who practice eastern religions we should remind ourselves that our mind is able to create all kinds of hallucinations - even without demonic influence. Just look at the example of LSD. Do you really believe that a horde of demons comes every time someone takes it to fool him around, or isn't it more likely that the brain does those hallucinations on its own (with help of some toxic chemicals).
Apart from creating hallucinations self-hypnosis can be a tool to cope with stress. One should always try self-hypnotic practices before he considers stress-medication. If it is taught as such a tool, to elementary students, its a good thing.
Elementary School is not just about reading, writing and arithmetic - I fully have to agree with the teacher on that point. It has to prepare the students for life. Whether they already have stress is at this point irrelevant - it is undeniably beneficial for them to know how to cope with stress in the future lifes.

I'm happy that I've learned how to meditate during my karate classes - otherwise my blood pressure would sometimes skyrocket during the program.

Now to the workfare issue.

Ehre wem Ehre gebührt! (eng: Give honor to whom honor belongs!)
I find it laudable that Todd rebuked the most common conservative objections to welfare issues.
Those objections are very often very misanthropic (Those on welfare just scam the system) or unworldly (Those on welfare are just to lazy to take one of the many jobs available).

He suggested that the poor would better be helped with workfare programs. Which is a thoughtful answer. I, as a social-democrat --> Social Democratic Party of Germany, still have problems to fully embrace those programs. And I'll try to give an answer as thoughtful as Todd gave.
Workfare programs have the advantage that they give the recipients of those money the feeling that they've worked for it - at least if they do something meaningful. And that is where the problem starts. This meaningful work was maybe done by someone else. It is very hard to prevent workfare people from doing jobs that were done by fully paid people before the program started.
To give an example: In Germany there were one-euro-jobs introduced. Additional to their welfare money the people on those one-euro-jobs were paid one tax free euro an hour. If they denied to work in such a job their welfare money was also annulled or reduced for at least a month. By law those employers of those 1-euro-jobbers weren't allowed to replace workers that formally worked for them with those cheaper people on the workfare program. But the abuses of those 1-Euro-jobs aren't. In the community where I lived 1-euro-jobbers were for example used to clean the green spaces next to the roads - something a company was paid for before the program was introduced.
Workfare programs tend to produce a tax-subsidized competition in the low income sector and very soon you find yourself with many more people on workfare than there were on welfare before. Therefor they tend to accelerate a process of impoverishment of the lower classes in our societies.

Furthermore: Workfare isn't very forward-looking.
Many people neglect the causes of unemployment in our western civilization. Most of it is caused by an ongoing automation of our industries and a very cheap workforce in former Third World countries. To be able to compete with the rising nations of China and India our industry is forced to replace more and more manual work by automation. Those workers and specialists who can build and handle those machineries have to be highly trained. Those who are unemployed are therefor mostly those who are less educated.
That's the point were I would start. Instead of workfare I'd prefer edu-fare, programs in which welfare moneys are dependent on the participation in educational programs (i.e. to improve technical skills, learn foreign languages, improve in written expression and so on). If western nations want to compete with the rising nations in Asia, we have to remember where our strengths are. They are most certainly not a poorly educated but cheap workforce. Therefor we should stop to subsidize manual work that needs no education, but should start to subsidize programs that would raise the education of our workforce even higher than it is today.

AMP / WOTMR: Naturalism, Calvinism and Double Standards

2008-03-28T19:40:00.000+01:00

The latest of Albert Mohlers blog entries made me write this article. It's about one of the most serious cases of compartmentalization that one encounters when he or she tries to debate Christians. It's about the moral responsibility in a reality in which course of action is determined before they are done or even thought of. More so it's about the right to punish in such a society.
People with a Christian worldview perspective encounter such a reality in Calvinism - specifically in predestination. Predestination is theologically one of the concepts that is hardest to grasp and seems to distort the Christian worldview the more someone understands it. This concept results from the perfect knowledge of God and the absolute sovereignty of his actions. If you have a theist worldview with an omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign good God all his plans for this world were known to him in the beginning of the world. Everything that would happen would have already played out in his perfect mind. Each and every action was known to God from the very beginning. God knew that I would be writing this article in 2008 when the world was created and he also knew that you are reading this article some time later. Even whether you would go to heaven or hell would have been known to God before you were born and there is nothing you can do about changing what God already knew before.

I can really understand that Todd Friel won't present his audience with those most disturbing theological facts. (He rejects to answer any questions dealing with this issue)

The only way you can accept this precept is if you realize that this world was never in any way, shape or form about us. Just in realizing and resigning to the fact that it was always completely and exclusively about God one can perhaps live without desperation in such a world, while probably facing hell.

And now lets turn to naturalism and what theists criticize it. If this world is purely governed by natural law - by physics - everything is purely like a machine. Our own thoughts are just like the program running on a machine which was built by an evolutionary process. There's nothing creative about them, nothing inspirational. Everything is purely chemical and predetermined.

How can anyone be punished if it were just predetermined chemical and physical processes who made him conceive and do the crimes one committed will be asked.

To answer it I want to compare again the similarities between theological predestination and naturalistic predeterminination. Both have in common that everything you do is preset. Either by Gods perfect will or by the laws of physics. Both show that 'Free Will' is just an illusion.

So how do theists go about the fact that in predestined reality no one bears responsibility for his/her actions in the same sense that no one bears responsibility for his/her in a naturalistic reality?

- They ignore it and live just as if Free Will would be real.
They do it for two reasons, Firstly we are addressed in Scripture as if we could have Free Will. So it seems that from his perfect perspective God would find some sense in presenting us with this illusion. Secondly it might keep people from living according to Gods law if they were told that everyone is already assigned whether he or she would go to hell.

People with a naturalistic worldview could of course do the same and ignore the deterministic nature of our reality and stay in their biologically evolved illusion of Free Will.

But even if we would turn our attention to the fact that our mind is just a chemical machine we don't face any moral implications. That we have morals and ethics depends on the fact that we do punish those who break the rules. Morals evolved because it is beneficial for individuals who live in a society to not get murdered or stolen from. Genes that would support social and ethical behavior would replicate very well in a world without cheaters. On the other hand: genes that make individuals cheat on such a moral society would replicate even better. At this point the concept of punishment becomes necessary for the moral rest of the society. To make a moral and ethical order survive within a species those who cheat on this order have to be punished - after all their evolutionary advantage that they could gain from such a behavior has to be neutralized.

Apart from personal responsibility our society has a much better interest in punishing unethical people. If we wouldn't punish cheaters the "God given" moral conscience would disappear rather quickly from the gene pool.

But there is a difference between calvinist predestination and naturalist predetermination. In a naturalist, predetermined world your evolutionary benefit you would gain from crimes just get neutralized by the rest of society through punishment. While in the calvinist, predestined world you get tortured in hell forever for your inability (if you don't have the faith to believe a book of highly disputable origin) to believe in God and respond rightly.

What upsets me most is that the scolding naturalism receives by theists is intellectually fraudulent.

You can't go through a theological education without encountering predestination at least once and learning about it. I don't have the slightest doubt that both, Albert Mohler and Todd Friel, know this concept very well. You can't possibly push that far enough to the back of the mind, that you wouldn't be reminded about it - and about its similarities - as soon as you encounter naturalism.

They just invoke naturalism when debating atheists to scare them off the atheist position into theism, while knowing very well that the predestination part of their worldview isn't much different. I guess they hope that most people won't know those calvinist parts of their religion during the witnessing encounter and that by the time they encounter this issue in their Christian walk their mind is that deafened that they won't remember the intellectual fraud that originally brought them into the religion.

To put it into an aphorism what the use of naturalism as a point against atheism is:

It's like a real-estate agent who wants to sell a house. He tries to get someone out of his old house and into a new by telling him that there are nasty mice in the cellar of his current house while knowing that a very similar breed of mice occupies the cellar of the new house as well.

WOTMR: The Cathedrals of Europe

2008-03-27T22:20:00.000+01:00

As an atheist in Europe you will have to address the issue of the magnificent cathedrals that you find all over in Europe. Todd explained how this grandeur of those buildings reflect the greatness of God, how those building tell the believing Christian about God and his relationship with God in making the person in the building feel exceedingly small in comparison to God.
Those cathedrals can't do that to me.

Even more, those cathedrals are the grandest failure in the history of Christianity.

Todd is right about the intentions of the planners and builders of those monumental building. Were those intentions really achieved?
Those buildings portray a stunning beauty, a breathtaking might - but they don't portray God in any way. They also don't portray the human race as small and powerless. They do the opposite. No stone in those cathedrals was set by God, no statue was carved by God, no window was colored by God, nothing of the perceivable beauty in those cathedrals was created by God. Those building are in all their magnificence, their grandeur and their stunning beauty creations of human beings.
Find something equally beauty in nature as those cathedrals! Compare the beauties of human arts to the beauties of nature.!Compare the chants of birds to the music written by Bach (especially his Brandenburg Concertos).
In every field of art human artist created magnificent pieces of beauty and grandeur. And if they did it in adoration of their God they failed in the grandest way - their pieces of art exceeded anything in beautiful might that their supposed God created.
No Christian should be afraid that those unique creations of man will pass after the end of Christianity. There is a greater purpose to come for those buildings and pieces of art. As monuments and museums to a bygone superstition they will portray the grandeur and the might of human creativity.

AMP: Let's do a trade-off!

2008-03-13T21:28:00.000+01:00

The pew center found out that there is a large minority of people who don't affiliate them with any religion. In his program on Tuesday Dr. Mohler claimed that many of those non-affiliated ones would just be people to whom religion is so precious that they couldn't imagine narrowing it by affiliating it with any major denomination. I know this kind of argument from Germany very well. And if any religious person encounters me with it I simply, now that we started the math business, make a trade-off. Of course it would be fair to count those who cross non-affiliated for spiritual reason still religious, but now that we started trading it would be equally fair to count those 'Christians' who are just Christian for reasons of tradition, conformism or personal benefit (being employed at a church) as non-religious persons. - normally that's the point the religious people will loose their interest in doing this math quite quickly.

German for beginners:

U-Boot Christen - Christen die nur zwei mal im Jahr auftauchen.

translation

submarine Christians - Christians who just appear twice a year.
(In German the words for 'to dive up' and for 'to appear' are the same word - auftauchen - and will make this joke work)

AMP: Homeschooling

2008-03-13T20:19:00.000+01:00

The first topic that Dr. Albert Mohler discussed on his program after I started this blog was homeschooling. There couldn't have been a better one for me even if I was allowed to choose the first topic. Homeschooling is of all the topics the constantly re-arise on the program the only one in which I have to disagree with Dr. Mohler because I'm more conservative than he is.

When looking at the history of homeschooling you will find that homeschooling arose from the very left of society. The reasoning for it was that in a society of fully autonomous citizens every parent knows best what is good for his/her child an is therefor entitled to make a fully free education choice for his/her child. Those early parents who did to teach their children at home did so to protect their children from conformist influences of society teaching their children to be fully autonomous persons.

Dr. Mohler generally disagrees with the precept of personal autonomy especially when it comes to the abortion issue. So why would he turn around on the issue of homeschooling? What is it that makes him suddenly believe in the personal autonomy of parents when it comes to the decision to home school their kids?

It boils down to the issues of sex-education and evolution. The evangelical right has lost one lawsuit after another to get evolution out of biology classes or to get creationism taught as equal in science class. I haven't heard as much on sex-education in the United States as I heard on the campaigns for creationism (against evolution) so I can't go deeper into that.

So homeschooling from the viewpoint of conservative evangelicals is a tool to protect their children from liberal agendas and ideas. I'm a social-democrat and as such I would if I had children raise them to recognize that freedom and wealth always come with a responsibility for the society, and especially for the weak in this society, you live in. Therefor I won't criticize him for trying to raise his children in the Christian faith and according to a conservative agenda.

Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Is the first formulation of the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant. When we are talking about whether someone should be allowed to pull his children out of public-school to pursue his own political agenda, we should ask ourselves whether one could make that universal law. If it was a universal law than we would also have to allow members of the ku klux klan or neo-nazis to pull their children out of school to pursue their own political agendas.

Secondly, can we allow anyone to teach his child at home?

American idol taught us all that not everyone who believes that he can sing is really able to sing. Why should we believe that every parent who believes she/he can teach her/his child is able to teach the child? Teaching requires a certain eloquence, knowledge of the subject, passion to see someone improve but also patience. I've already taught physics and English (foreign language) as a mentor. From my own experience I know that there's a huge difference between knowing something and teaching it. If I would homeschool I might be able to teach mathematics, natural sciences and politics. But I wouldn't be able to teach musics, foreign languages I don't know like Spanish (which is getting more and more important on the American continent) or art.

I'm aware that homeschooling-students are tested whether they achieve the standards that are required of public-school students. By this it is guaranteed that homeschooling students receive the same education. What isn't tested and what can't be tested is what kind of worldview is taught to them. I'm not concerned about the Christian worldview at this point, but I would seriously be concerned if a child of racist, nazi, communist or any other form of autocratic worldview affiliated parents would be deprived of the chance to get instructed by and under the influence of freedom loving persons.

Furthermore those tests for what is taught and how the children are taught within their homeschooling families can just work as long as the number of homeschoolers doesn't grow too large. Besides the ones within the evangelical community who openly campaign for those tests to be removed there's also a large faction of pragmatics. Those pragmatics know that any effective control of what and how is taught in homeschooling families will become impossible in practice as soon as the number of homeschoolers exceed a critical point.

Finally we also have to keep the future of those children in mind.

It isn't just enough to know something. You also need to have it certified. If Dr. Mohler works on his campus with students from homeschooling families than this is surely laudable, but very rarely you will meet universities and companies in our modern world who have the time and patience to assess each applicant.

In Germany and in the United Kingdom (I just know those two countries in that matter) before the real choice process starts those applications that doesn't fit the standard (missing documents, remains of spilled coffee) aren't read but sent immediately back (Germany) or thrown into the bin (UK). I dare to doubt that the process of choosing candidates is that different in the United States.
Do I need to add that missing school documents would fit those criteria for an application to be sent back or to be recycled?

My atheism

2008-03-09T03:43:00.002+01:00

I will be asked why I am an atheist. And therefor I need to give this answer right away.

I like to explain my atheism with a scenario.

We are living on a small blue planet that orbits a G-type star at a distance of about 150 mil. kilometers. There need to be a loot of parameters balanced very well to allow for life on this planet. But however numerous those constraints on the existence of advanced civilizations are - the universe is sufficiently huge to make it certain that there are advanced civilizations somewhere.

I don't want to argue at this place for the likelihood of those. I know very well that many Christians deny that those civilizations exist because their creation was never mentioned in the bible. I still want to ask my Christian readers to go with the existence of those civilizations just for the sake of this argument.

When presented with aliens in most Science-Fiction series on TV you will see most likely aliens about as much developed as we humans are. They might be advanced by several hundred years, but you rarely see civilizations that are developed even more.
From the early agricultural beginnings in Egypt to modern day you can roughly tell that the age of our civilization is 10,000 years. (or 6000 years if you committed to biblical creationism). Giving that there is no point of self-destruction in which every civilization when it reaches a certain point of development destroys itself there could be aliens whose civilization is millions of years old.

What would also mean that they are technologically advanced to a point where their abilities would seem magical or divine to us.

Should we therefor pack gold, silver, diamonds and things of worth into a rocket and shoot it into space?

My answer to it is clearly no, and I think most of my readers will agree.

Firstly, we don't know in which direction to shoot the rocket.

Secondly, we don't know whether gold, silver, diamonds and things that seem precious to us are of use for such a civilization.

Thirdly, the aliens never asked for it - even if, (like some UFO-scientists may claim) they did it in a way that the evidence for this is in modern days highly disputable. (to put is mildly)

Fourthly, we don't know whether our supply reaching one civilization wouldn't enrage another one.

Therefor the waste of shooting rockets loaded with valuables and the waste of time to do that isn't justified by any reason.

Now, after setting that up let us turn to theism.

Is it justified to send valuables to any kind of Gods?
And there are sent many valuables to God. Go to Europe and look at the cathedrals. Go to the muslim world and look at the mosques. Even Buddhism can be exceedingly wasteful. Simply research the Swedagon Pagoda in Burma.
Beyond the apparent things done for religion and massive amounts of valuables given to religious purposes, there is an enormous amount of time spent for those purposes - in every religion.

I reason against those sacrifices with the very same arguments than with shooting rockets into the sky.

Firstly, we don't know in which direction to shoot the rocket.

And we also don't know which God to give our time and money to.

Secondly, we don't know whether gold, silver, diamonds and things that seem valuable to us are of use for such a civilization.

How do we know that prayers are of use for God? How can anything we could give to a God be of use for him, her,it or them? God, if existent, could have anything he, she, it or they could want. What exactly do you think he, she, it or they needs from you?

Thirdly, the aliens never asked for it - even if (like some UFO-scientist may claim) they did it in a way that the evidence for this is in modern days highly disputable. (to put is mildly)

It is said that God asked for it. In the Bible, Quran or the Veden. But the origin of those books is also disputable. Supposing this God would be almighty we could expect there to be much better evidences for the demands. Extraordinary demands also need extraordinary proves.
Let's look at the bible for example.
If we go by the best estimations the first gospel was written 10 years after the death of Jesus. Jesus could have turned water into ink, sand into paper and made one of his disciples write his words and deeds down as they were said and done if he was the son of God. But: It seems that he trusted the most important things ever said and done into the hands of 10 years of gossip.
Even if those words and deeds were written down by a first hand witness; 10 years are still a long time. Anyone who doesn't believe that is asked at this point to write down what he or she did 10 years ago.

Fourthly, we don't know whether our supply reaching one civilization wouldn't enrage another one.

That's a really big problem with Gods. You sacrifice to one - you enrage another.

Conclusion:

Just like the aliens would need to show up and ask for their rockets full of gold and diamonds - God would also need to show some provable sort of interaction with this world that would be enough to justify the enormous amount of sacrifice he, she, it or they demand.

The ambition of a lot of atheists or agnostics to disprove that he, she, it or they don't exist is leading nowhere. The lack of provable interaction itself justifies a de-facto atheism completely. I don't discard the possibility of the existence of a God or Gods but I discard the necessity to give anything to them.

Why I'm doing this blog

2008-03-09T02:45:00.000+01:00

Are you an atheist who listens to Christian talk-radio? If you are you will know how quickly you can get intrigued by it.
While most of the listeners of those program want to hear news and the world reviewed from their worldview perspective, I'm fascinated by listening to a worldview that isn't my own. In his program on March the 3rd Dr. Albert Mohler presented his audience with the question "Can the Church learn from the World?".
Of course it can.
You can reinforce your worldview perspective by listening to those you agree with, but you can reinforce it as well by listening to those you passionately disagree with. But there is a difference between both options. While you will stay on your own small worldview island if you choose the first possibility, you will be prepared for your political opponents if you choose the second possibility. I'm still amazed how many atheists call the Way of the Master program naively and stumble when they are asked whether they are a good person. You just need to listen to the WOTM program for one week to know that this 'good person test' is their standard for callers who aren't Christians. I guess the atheist callers in this program who aren't prepared for this test are the same kind of person who isn't prepared for the question: "What is your motivation to apply for this job?" in a job interview. One could make the point that if we would simply ignore them, we wouldn't need to know what to answer to their petty tests. True, but it's not just because of that. By listening to those programs you will get to know their worldview. You will get to know how they argue their positions and those points in their worldview they won't come down to on their own when you are debating them.
I hope to help atheists who want to engage theists with this blog. I also hope that Christian readers of this blog are encouraged to look beyond their worldview island as well. Learning from atheists why they are atheist is something very different than learning from Albert Mohler or Todd Friel why those atheists are atheist. Just like learning why both mentioned are Christians is different when you learn it from than, than if you would learn it from atheists.
And there is of course a third purpose. If you listen to Christian radio programs you sometimes find yourself agreeing, regularly laughing and quite often wanting to call and correct the host. I really thought about doing that before. But if I would call every time I would want to correct them I would pretty soon be a pain in their neck. Until now I very much contented myself by writing e-mails to those programs. I'm sure that they are read by someone and my mails have already been read 3 times on the Way of the Master program but they can't read every mail sent in. This blog shall give vent my comments, my critiques and moments I found funny.

And last but not least I guess that both shows are greatly interested what people who aren't of their worldview perspective think about them. Todd Friel tends to say that the world must think he's a knucklehead (thank you for teaching me this nice world Todd) he might be surprised that this isn't exactly what I think about him.