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Sunday, 12/22/13
Neuroscience
If even the most hard core materialists can’t squelch their hankering for an afterlife in a world completely different from the one we now inhabit, what does that suggest for the rest of us? Writing in the December 18, 2013 issue of Aeon, Michael Graziano explains why he believes that, at some point in the future, human beings will be able to upload their brains into a computer and live forever in a cyber world of “endless fun.” Just as we have managed to map out the human genome, so that, theoretically at least, we could actually construct a new human from the ground up, so efforts are now under way to map the neuron network of the human brain, so that we should be able to replicate it in a computer. Then we could upload our brains into a cyber world of our own creation, where we would still be ourselves and yet participate with everyone else in all knowledge and every delightful experience we might imagine. The prospect of this both excites and disturbs Dr. Graziano, since what we can make to delight us could also become something to terrify us endlessly. We don’t have to speculate too long to understand whence such fears and hankering arise, and if we need more evidence that human beings are what Bible says they are – the image-bearers of God, created for one or another eternal disposition – then such thinking as we see here should help to confirm that belief.
Art
Art has the power to engage people from different backgrounds and worldviews over the pressing issues and concerns that we share in common as human beings. This has been the purpose of the Charis art exhibit, a collection of works created by North American and Asian Christian artists, and featured on various campuses over the past three years. As curator Rachel Hostetter Smith explained, the project was created to demonstrate the “hospitality” power of art (“Art as Invitation,” Christian Scholar’s Review, a Summer 2013). She explains, and the Charis project demonstrated, “art’s power to provoke conversations and discovery in our communities, churches, and educational institutions today.” Art assists in creating a Christian presence in communities and of presenting “the challenge of living with a spirit of grace – God’s grace – and all that entails in our attitudes and actions.” This is an exciting idea and certainly yet another reason why churches should take more interest in the arts. As Anne Bradford explained, “art can do much,” and creating a context for gracious hospitality and conversation is but one of many uses validating the importance of the arts for the work of the Kingdom.
Monday, 12/23/13
Moral philosophyFriedrich Hayek did not approve the moral philosophy of modernism, but he could offer nothing solid to replace it. So reports Jonathan Neumann in the January/February issue of Standpoint (“God, Hayek, and the Conceit of Reason”). Hayek rejected the scientism, positivism, constructivism, and utilitarianism of modernism. He did not believe that reason and experience alone are capable of producing a reliable morality. He insisted that traditional values and inherited teachings must be considered, but he had to admit that most of what was best in the morality of tradition derived from religion and revelation. An agnostic, Hayek could not go there; however, neither could he avoid the truth of Christianity’s contribution to morality and civilization. Here is the great moral dilemma of our time: Modern man cannot, on his own terms, construct a reliable and verifiable morality. Yet he will not be bound by anything “revealed.” Postmodern man can do no better, given his demand for absolute relativism and the total freedom of the individual. Hayek, at least, admitted his dependency upon revealed religion. Modern and postmodern man will not. Instead, they steal what they will, giving no acknowledgement of or explanation for their thievery, and condemning what does not agree with their moral preferences, leaving them and their desires as masters of their school of morality.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5372/full
Wednesday, 12/25/13
Foreign Policy
The US government is finally facing up to the fact the nation-building efforts of the past two decades are no longer sustainable and were not particularly effective at any rate. Writing in the January/February 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs, Michael J. Mazarr traces the origins and development of this policy through the Clinton and Bush Administrations (“The Rise and Fall of the Failed-State Paradigm”). The policy involved identifying and trying to rehabilitate weak or failed states as a deterrent to terrorism and regional instability and a way of investing US military, political, and economic strength worldwide. But, as has now become clear, problems associated with culture, tradition, education, and religion make any short-term fixes for failed states unlikely to succeed. The nation is now beginning to look in other directions for foreign policy, yet without totally lapsing into an isolationist posture. It will be interesting to see what kind of policies emerge to guide the national agenda, and whether or not America’s political leaders will demonstrate any more humility and prudence than we have seen in the immediate past.
World History
Some useful insights from Lincoln Paine concerning why we ought to read world history: “The simplest and most useful reply...is that it is your world and your history. Someone else may do the work of teasing a narrative strand from the skein of all that’s happened over the past several thousand years. But even though the focus is on different people in different times, the story you are reading is your own.” "”he point is not to cultivate a homogenized, politically correct worldview; the most casual reading of history will demonstrate the folly of such an enterprise. It is, rather, to get a grasp of the sorts of experiences and cultures that inform other people’s worldviews.” “Our ancestors were remarkable people, and a thoughtful remembrance of who they were and what they accomplished is a small payment on our incalculable debt to them. If we can condition ourselves to ask about them the sorts of questions that give us pause, we can begin to think more sensibly—though no less passionately and appreciatively—about our world and our places in it.” Applied to the reading and study of Church history, or, rather, the lack of such reading, these comments perhaps help to explain the disconnectedness, shallowness, narrowness, and overall historical ignorance and ingratitude of contemporary Christians respecting their own history. We know almost nothing about our history and thus have willfully forfeited the wisdom, counsel, and cultural heritage of our forebears. If we had a better vision of the unseen realm and a greater sense of our continuity with the Christians of the past, we might be a more united, orthodox, missional, and redemptive people. (“Why We Should Read World History,” The Daily Beast, December 25, 2013)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/25/why-we-should-read-world-history.html
Thursday, 12/26/13
Journalism
Is print journalism becoming a thing of the past? Many have suggested as much, especially since the advent of television, and now the Internet, news sources. Nicholas Lemann reviews the book, Out of Print, for the Times Literary Supplement (18 December 2013) and considers that such an outcome may well be in the offing, since, as George Brock argues in his book, there never has been a mass audience for serious news anyway. For major newspapers worldwide, subscriptions are down, ad revenues are down, and publishers are looking for online platforms to preserve their brand. Would it be such a bad thing if the newspapers were all to go out of business? I for one do not think so. People who want to be “in the know” will always exist and those who live to provide what they want will find profitable ways to connect with them. And Christians, who should be in the forefront of those who want to understand our times (1 Chron. 12.32), should take good advantage of every new outlet for serious news that may emerge as the newspapers continue their inexorable decline.
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1353972.ece
Philosophy
We’re all cosmopolitans now. Or, at least, we should be. So argues Nigel Warburton in his article, “Cosmopolitans” (Aeon, December 26, 2013). The Internet and social media have decreased the distance between the peoples of the earth, so we all just need to pay more attention to the needs of others and pony up our fair share toward their relief. We should not need religion to make us care about our neighbors, whether close at hand or far away. The problem, however, is that such caring “seems to be going so much against our natural inclinations”. “One source of evil in the world is people’s inability to ‘decentre’” – what Christians recognize as “sin.” Mr. Warburton is both right and wrong: We should be more loving toward our neighbors – the image of God in us reminds us it is so. But we are not precisely because the law of sin within us makes us above all cynical and self-concerned. Who will save us from this spiritual schizophrenia? Only, pace Mr. Warburton, true religion.
Friday, 12/27/13
Art
Art has a moral use, or should have. So argues John Armstrong, at any rate (“What Is Art For?”, City Journal, Autumn 2013). He explains that art has value only as it benefits humankind: “...art is a therapeutic instrument:…its value lies in its capacity to exhort, console, and guide us toward better versions of ourselves and to help us live more flourishing lives, individually and collectively.” Not everyone agrees with this notion. Some insist that art is valuable as it shocks our sensibilities, but Mr. Armstrong explains that this is just another form of therapy: “Shock can be valuable because it may prompt a finer state of mind—more alert to complexity and nuance and more open to doubt. The overarching aim is psychological improvement.” The same is true if we think of art as primarily valuable because of what we learn from it about history: “We value historical information of this kind for various reasons: because we want to understand more about our ancestors and how they lived and because we hope to gain insight from these distant people and cultures. But these efforts lead back, eventually, to a single idea: that we might benefit from an encounter with history as revealed in art.” So also with technical advances in the arts – we value them not in themselves, but for how they benefit us. How, then, does art benefit us? Mr. Armstrong lists the following benefits of true art:
“A corrective of bad memory: Art makes the fruits of experience memorable and renewable. It is a mechanism to keep our best insights in good condition and make them publicly accessible.
A purveyor of hope: Art keeps pleasant and consoling things in view, fortifying us against despair.
A source of dignified sorrow: Art reminds us of the legitimate place of sorrow in a good life, so that we recognize our difficulties as elements of any noble existence.
A balancing agent: Art encodes with unusual clarity the essence of our good qualities; it holds them before us to help rebalance our natures and direct us to our best possibilities.
A guide to self-knowledge: Art can help us identify what is central to life but difficult to put into words. Visual art helps us recognize ourselves.
A guide to the extension of experience: Art is an immensely sophisticated accumulation of experience, presented to us in well-organized forms. We can hear the voices of other cultures, extending our notions of ourselves and the world. At first, much art seems merely ‘other’—but we discover that it contains ideas that we can make our own, in ways that enrich us.
A tool of re-sensitization: Art saves us from our habitual disregard for what is all around us. We recover our sensitivity and look at the familiar in new ways. We are reminded that novelty and glamour are not the only solutions.”
Unless, however, art glorifies God in some way, it fails to fulfill the reason God has given this gift to men. The true and ultimate value of art is not in the benefits it brings to men only, but primarily in the praise, adoration, wonder, and honor it provokes toward God.
http://www.city-journal.org/2013/23_4_urb-art.html
Saturday, 12/28/13
Conversation
Sherry Turkle is on a crusade to save conversation from the “alone together” isolation and performance mentality of social technology. The MIT professor was interviewed by Megan Garber about her forthcoming book on the art of conversation (“Saving the Lost Art of Conversation,” The Atlantic, December 22, 2013). Ms. Garber writes, “The conclusion she’s arrived at while researching her new book is not, technically, that we’re not talking to each other. We’re talking all the time, in person as well as in texts, in e-mails, over the phone, on Facebook and Twitter. The world is more talkative now, in many ways, than it’s ever been. The problem, Turkle argues, is that all of this talk can come at the expense of conversation. We’re talking at each other rather than with each other.” Conversation is a skill requiring attention, whereas communicating through social media is more a kind of performance art. In conversation we have the opportunity to enhance one another’s humanity: “She advocates limiting our device usage in ‘sacred spaces’ like the dinner table, the places where phones and their enticements may impede intimacy and interaction. She wants us to look into each other’s eyes as we talk. She wants us to read each other’s movements. She wants us to have conversations that are supremely human.” Here is an arena where Christians can claim the spotlight and show the way back to this most basic human skill and need. The Bible has much to say about how we use our tongues, and prominent among its teaching are words like grace, truth, edification, and the glory of God.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-eavesdropper/355727/