Civil Commotion

Yet another terror attack, this time against the airport and subway system of Brussels, Belgium.

Three explosions that ripped through the Belgian capital of Brussels on Tuesday killed at least 26 people and wounded 130 more, according to Belgian media, and raised the reality of terror once again in the heart of Europe.

“We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters.

The point cannot be made too often or too firmly: The faith to which clergy summon us is moral error; the Holy Men are the Dark Side. Once you set aside all epistemic standards for belief … you can believe anything. You can believe, as Christians did right up until the Enlightenment stopped them, that witches must be hanged. You can believe, as Muslims do, that death in battle against infidels means immediate transit to Paradise. You can believe, as Mormons do, that someday you’ll be a god.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

William Clifford

When your questions are answered with, “You must just have faith,” run for your life — and make no mistake: it is your life that is at stake.

A reader points me toward this thoughtful piece at Balloon Juice which views Ted Cruz’ campaign as a reprise of the apostle Paul’s successful transfiguration of class antagonisms into Christianity.

Friedrich Nietzsche made the argument about the triumph of “ascetic morality” and the Christian reevaluation of values 140 years ago in On the Genealogy of Morals. Imagine you feel oppressed by a culture and a political system that has consistently ignored you and the things you care about. (For today’s conservative, these values might include the definition of marriage as being “between a man and a woman,” the idea of an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, or that life begins at conception.) Now imagine someone promised to overturn all of the prevalent values of the day in favor of your own, opposing values. For Nietzsche, this meant the value of being wealthy would be reversed into the virtue of being poor; the value of being proud would be upended by the virtue of humility; the celebration of the body would be transvalued into the virtue of sexual restraint. Having power, on this account, would mark the powerful as morally blameworthy; being powerless, by contrast, was a guarantee of righteousness. It was Paul and his astonishing insight into the psychological needs of the powerless of his time that accomplished this transvaluation of values, the very same psychological needs that Cruz hopes to tap into now.

I think Trump has done a better job of mobilizing resentments than Cruz, but the general observation is correct.

The appalling irony, of course, is that the Republicans have spent the past 7-years pursuing a nihilistic policy of frustrating governance; even as their constituency seeks a strongman to get things done, they are so reckless that the Supreme Court might be shorthanded for an entire year because they simply refuse to do their job.

Bah. The stupid are like the poor; they will always be with us.

For with the fact of evolution Christianity died. There is no longer an original Adam and Eve, no longer an original sin, and no need for a savior. So there’s probably no creator either.

I’m thinking like a scientist, which means following David Hume’s principle that a wise person proportions one’s belief to the available evidence. Going beyond that is unreasonable. So I refuse to play the pretend game of faith by pretending to know more than what I can reasonably know.

John Loftus

If you ever need to tell someone safe about your sins, I’m the guy. I don’t talk in my sleep, never tell others, and will go to my grave with more secrets people have told me than you would believe. The church really isn’t a very safe place. I wish it was, but it isn’t. So most of us hide the reality of who we are, what we’ve done, and the shame we feel. I wanted people (including pastors) to have at least one place where they could feel safe and could deal with their sin and shame. I was that for Tullian.

Pastor Steve Brown

What should be expected when you have a collection of people brought together by nothing but the shared conviction that they’re no damn good? A cheery musical, like The Music Man?

John Piper tells the story of the time God spoke to him. We aren’t talking here about the evangelical’s idiomatic “God spoke to me,” which usually means an insignificant coincidence, or a really strong feeling, or some such. No. John Piper claims he and God had a conversation.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.” There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by “come and see.” Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see” mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done,” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.”

Well.

Here is what I want to know: On this very day, right here in the Good Ol’ U.S. of A., at least half a dozen people — Maybe somebody on the very street where you live! — got out of bed this morning and had the private psychological experience of realizing that he or she is, in fact, the incarnation of Napoleon, or Idi Amin, or Humphrey Bogart. Why should I believe they’re crazy, and John Piper is not?