Civil Commotion

Michael Hamar has turned-up a piece at the Washington Post about research at the University of Alabama which upholds something many of us have doubtless suspected: Trump voters are low-information voters.

Our research finds that Trump has attracted a disproportionate (and unprecedented) number of “low-information voters” to his campaign. Furthermore, these voters are more likely to respond to emotional appeals — whether about the economy, immigration, Muslims, racial relations, sexism, and even hostility to the first African American U.S. president, Barack Obama. They are the ideal constituency for a candidate like Trump.

We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition.” Those with a high need for cognition have a positive attitude toward tasks that require reasoning and effortful thinking and are, therefore, more likely to invest the time and resources to do so when evaluating complex issues. Those with a low need for cognition, on the other hand, find little reward in the collection and evaluation of new information when it comes to problem solving and the consideration of competing issue positions.

That sounds about right.

A theologian with Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary upholds something I’ve said repeatedly over the years: Christian theology goes POOF! without a historical Adam and Eve.

There’s no transcript for me to cut and paste; you’ll have to listen. Basically, the argument is this: There must have been an Adam because Christianity is crazy without a historical Adam, and we’re not crazy, therefore Adam must have existed. This obviously is putting the cart before the horse, but they’re desperate and only need to trick idiots.

Don’t be deceived, by the way, by the speaker’s egregious misunderstanding of mitochondrial Eve and mitochondrial Adam; they are not a single couple from whom we are all descended. The best current estimate separates them by about 80,000-years.

So: Dawn had to run to the far end of Harris-Teeter to pick-up something on the grocery list that we’d overlooked, and I was left idling around the magazine rack. I like to check what they’re selling now and then. I rarely pitch features to magazines these days because the pay has got so awful, but I do like to see what people are buying and reading.

Well, what do you know? There’s a new genre that I haven’t previously encountered, with titles like OffGrid, Bugout, Survivor’s Edge, and American Survival Guide. Yep, right next to the gun mags there were four new pubs devoted to surviving in the dystopian world that the Trump-loving gun freaks will do their best to help create tomorrow.

This is serious stuff, too, with stories like How to survive nuclear winter. (That’s a bona fide story; I did not make it up.)

I’m thinking that, with all those years as a civil engineer, I’ve got to be better prepared to sell pieces to these magazine’s editors than some Joe Blow who has spent his life trying to decipher the mystery of chemtrails.

All those years spent telling Trump-like developers how to drain a Florida swamp, and reading all the Carl Hiaasen novels, have surely prepared me for Your post-apocalypse home in the Everglades. And, of course, I grew-up in Detroit: I can probably whip-out How your family can thrive in the basement of an abandoned warehouse pretty quickly. And, Protecting your dehydrated veggies stash from other homeless people should be a piece of cake (and recyclable to the gun mags with only minor editing).

I attended college in one of the richest hard-rock mining areas on earth, and to this day there are hundreds of abandoned mines waiting to be explored. How about A snug and comfortable winter in an adit? And who wouldn’t find useful instruction in How to remove ALL the quills before eating a porcupine?

If Trump wins, I know where my escape hatch is.

Poor Albert Mohler: Now, even one of the most influential Christian Reformed theologians is backing-away from hostility to LGBT relationships.

He [Nicholas Wolterstorff] went on to say,

“If homosexual orientation is not morally blameable or a disorder, and if members of the church are to accept people as they are, then why is it wrong for people with [homosexual] orientation [to act] on their desires in a loving and covenantal relationship?”

In the controversy centering on Jen Hatmaker, I made the point that what is missed I think by many is the key issue of whether or not a same-sex relationship can be holy. In the case of Nicholas Wolterstorff, I think what needs to be noted in particular is his argument that same-sex relatedness and same-sex sexual behaviors are not rooted in the Fall, but rather represent what he calls a “creational variance.” That is a massively important argument.

Mohler grounds his objection in the Genesis creation story, of course, and what Mohler has to say is, right out of the gate, unworthy of serious consideration.

Let me repeat that, so that there is no confusion about what I am saying here: Albert Mohler is an intellectually unserious man, and does not deserve the attention of people who are serious-minded grown-ups. His argument rests on a fairy tale.

He is intellectually dishonest, too. After all, according to the Inerrant Bible …

Genesis 2:18 Then the Lord God said, “I see that it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make the companion he needs, one just right for him.”

19 The Lord God used dust from the ground and made every animal in the fields and every bird in the air. He brought all these animals to the man, and the man gave them all a name.

20 The man gave names to all the tame animals, to all the birds in the air, and to all the wild animals. He saw many animals and birds, but he could not find a companion that was right for him.

21 So the Lord God caused the man to sleep very deeply. While he was asleep, God took one of the ribs from the man’s body. Then he closed the man’s skin where the rib had been.

22 The Lord God used the rib from the man to make a woman. Then he brought the woman to the man.

23 And the man said,

“Finally! One like me,
with bones from my bones
and a body from my body.
She was taken out of a man,
so I will call her ‘woman.’”

It’s clear, I think, that the Big Guy had, at best, a pretty vague idea of what would fire-up Adam.

Morality has nothing whatever to do with the diktat of an Invisible Wizard. Morality is that set of behavioral conventions that make it possible for people to live together more-or-less peacefully in communities that thrive. At the time Genesis originated people still lived in tribes, and the tribe’s perpetuation required that every man … contribute.

Now, for what it’s worth, I agree without caveat with Mohler’s protests that Christianity has historically regarded same-sex relationships as sin, and as being a manifestation of The Fall. The Fall was not an actual historical event, however, and Christian teaching crashes pretty quickly when you try to utilize The Fall as an allegorical way of saying we should all be nicer, et cetera, et cetera.

And so much for The Fall. It is a preposterous myth that has worked extraordinary evil over the millennia, and it is time to put it in humanity’s childish past. Does Mohler not know what St. Paul wrote?

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.