Vision

I don’t own a TV. This is more a statement of my own lack of self control then it is a defiance of culture. If there is a television in front of me and I am anyway remotely bored, I will watch it. So because of this I found myself over at Raghu’s apartment last night in order to watch The Office and hang out. It seems that all the networks are coming out with new shows at the moment because the commercial breaks were peppered with premiers that I must see. I must add that with all the crap being processed out there, I am in no way regretting my decision not to own a TV. But with the temptation to be gluttonous out of the way, I will catch The Office and Lost. Probably on the internet.

So to close, here are a few quotes from Dwight from The Office:

“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think “would an idiot do that?” and if they would, I do not do that thing.”

“I am fast. To give you a reference point I am somewhere between a snake and a mongoose…and a panther.”

“No. Don't call me a hero. Do you know who the real heroes are? The guys who wake up every morning and go in their normal jobs and get a distress call from the commissioner and take off their glasses and change into capes and fly around fighting crime. Those are the real heroes.”

Environmentalism

If you were a cartoon watching child in the 90’s, you probably had more then your fair share of environmental propaganda (mixed in with all the “Just Say No” anti-drug stuff). My personal favorite was Captain Planet who saved the world from evil polluting super villains. This, along with a kid who was absolutely nuts about animals, probably drove my parents insane on many occasions. Especially my dad, whose job at the time was a government trapper. I remember asking him why he had to kill animals when in my mind they were the innocent bystanders of invasive humans.

When I got a little older I eventually embraced my redneck roots and have been hunting many times with my father. I learned the gravity of killing, and had a very good example in my dad of a proper hunter. We killed for meat not for trophy, cleaning the animal ourselves, and this really impressed upon me a respect of the cycle of life and death.

I have found myself turning back to my tree hugging tendencies in the past few years, and feeling like I am coming to it with a much more mature attitude. In my humble opinion, the conservative right has completely butchered the Christian position on the environment; a large part in reaction to the left’s extreme view on it. Liberals would have us completely cut off from nature, stating that the natural state of the world is humanless. But conservatives would have nature destroyed for the sake of our progress, negligence, or apathy. Neither has a balance view.

Our relationship to the Earth is one of stewardship; God gave us the job of looking after it in Genesis. The picture of a steward is one who greatly trusted by the king is given the power to rule the kingdom until the king returns. This job should rank up there on our list, for it was the very first job given to man. Ideally this would encompass two things.

1. We should be a gathering and passing on intelligence about the natural cycles of the world. This shows us the importance of science and the importance of education; passing on a knowledge base to the next generation. It also shows the importance of being closely acquainted with nature; whether that be hunting, camping, hiking, gardening, getting outside, etc.

2. We should be interacting with our environment in a positive way as to develop a symbiotic relationship with nature. This can only be done when the first is properly executed. In contrast to the humanless nature, humans should pursue a very active role in the natural world. We should be making an earth that benefits both people and the environment.

This is all ideal of course; man has had a dysfunctional relationship with the natural world since we left the garden. As a whole we tear things up for our selfish benefit. But I don’t think that the church should forget what we are striving for.

Try to Take Over the World!

We got two additions to our family yesterday. Penelope and Amelia were once two humble lab mice who were rescued from death by snake by my wife. While I initially though the snake option was better, they are pretty darn entertaining (except when they get a bit too excited and pee on you).

I have been getting a treehouse itch lately and while tromping through a patch of urban wilderness yesterday discovered several large trees worthy of such an undertaking. Laura says that I have to build her some shelves first though.

Determinism Conclusion

I went through all that trouble for two reasons.

First, to point out that this debate isn’t regulated to the realm of Seminary students. Einstein has probably had more influence on me being a Calvinist then Calvin. Theology is important, but I believe it on the same level as Science and Philosophy, that they all belong under the authority of Scripture.

Second, to show that within all fields of human study where you find them running into Determinism you find them running into paradox. I don’t hide behind the banner of things that are unknowable very often because it is a slippery slope; but I do hold that there are very specific thing to which human do not have the capacity to understand or reconcile with logic. This happens to be one of them. Unless you are comfortable holding a paradox in your mind, you will fall to one side or the other, between man’s perspective and God’s perspective. But believe me that I will not fault you for trying to disprove me on this.

Finally I can move on to other things like the fact that Prince Caspian has put out a movie poster:

Determinism (Part 4)

Theology

When considering God, determinism in some form or fashion will be present. From the pantheists need of Fate to the theists need for a first cause, any higher presence with power greater than ours can supersede our will. I am going to specifically look at the Christian view of determinism because it is what influences me the most and it is the particular “religion” that I know the most about.

For Christians, God is the creator of all that exists (physical matter, time, humans) and because of this He is Omnipotent, meaning all powerful. He is also continually active within His creation, in contrast to the Deist god who was creator but then takes a passive role in his creation. He is the author of all that is good and at the very least uses that which is evil to work for His good. He became a man, and entered into time to redeem mankind with His sacrifice.

This redemption was necessary because despite the initial creation being perfect, man had fell and brought creation into a fallen state. The Fall begins to raise very important deterministic questions. If God is in complete control of His creation, how is it that He allowed evil to be a part of it? One view is that the Fall was part of the original plan and that all evil is used to the eventual good and glory of God. Most Christians will place the Fall as Adam’s choice to disobey God, resulting in the fallen world. The position of man’s will in relation to God’s plan begins to bear very important consequences.

From the protestant viewpoint there are two major factions that are represented by the follows of John Calvin and those of Jacobus Arminius. Calvinism emphasizes the complete sovereignty of God over His creation. Specifically in the area of man’s salvation, this view would claim that man is born in a state of total depravity, meaning that no matter how righteous we are, we will still reject God and choose self. Salvation in any man is the work of God alone, and by His calling and grace man is redeemed. Ultimate glory is God’s because he rescues man when man can do nothing for himself. The Arminian position emphasizes human free will, and the choice of following God. Their position is that God gave a portion of will to each man that he might choose to honor God with his life or deny him with it. The glory to God is in the love of willing followers.

Ultimately, all Christians believe in a powerful God who maintains His power in the world. There is a peace in knowing that there is something acting against the chaos of the universe. Equally as ecumenical is the rejection of fatalism; that despite how much God really requires an individual to carry out His purposes, the Christian is always called to a life of serving God. Furthermore, all Christians believe God places value on individual human life, that from the human point of view concepts of social Darwinism are a wrong and twisted application of determinism.

Obviously Christianity has had much to say on the subject, so I can’t fully express every point of view throughout history, the best I can do is an overview. Plus, I need to finish this so I can move on. I will post my conclusions tomorrow and be done.

Determinism (Part 3)

Psychology

What difference does determinism make, how does it effect the way we perceive ourselves?

We start by trying to understand several factors that shape us as individuals. Psychology puts forth several, the most popular being the nature vs nurture debate. Both are deterministic scenarios, nature claiming that our genetics shapes our personality, motivations, outlook, and choices. Nurture claiming our environment (parents, climate, society, income, etc.) directs us. The response to both of these positions is one of individual will and decision to choose to squander or to make the most of one’s position in life.


Choice (whether we like it or not) is a big part of determinism on a human scale for it drives much of our current understanding of responsibility and motivation. If a murderer had no choice, if he killed because of a long string of prior events inevitably led to his crime, how can society hold him to justice for a crime that was in the works from the beginning of creation? An even bigger obstacle is apathy or fatalism in which determinism kills any motivation in an individual. Why do anything if your personal actions matter not?


On the other hand, if all of the power of the future lay in the choices of individuals, we arrive in a very chaotic world. When one man has the power to start a nuclear war with a choice, the future becomes a frightening and a very uncertain place. Also in this category lies the theory of multiple universes. It states that for every choice (whether it be an electrons divergent path or your decision to go buy a donut on your way to work) there is a different universe. Therefore every universe is determined, set in stone, but every choice gets made. This is the logic behind movies such as Back to the Future, which shift between universes through time. It is one of those fishy theories that can never be proved or disproved.


Choice, responsibility, and our own will seem minute details when studying the heavens but it is difficult to operate in our would at any other scale than the human one. Shifting from a universal perspective to a human perspective is important in understanding how we function. But just because we operate in the cause and effect, past present future time doesn't mean the larger functions of the universe don't effect how we are to live. Next, the ethics of determinsm through the lens of theology. God vs humanity! Look forward to it!

Determinism (Part 2)

Science


The material sciences will begin to give a hard definition to determinism through tangible applications. Newtonian physics set the stage (though the original idea is at least as old as the Greek Atomists) for science to take its turn at bringing order to the chaos. It starts with individual objects that are on the move, and predicts their future movements based on universal laws, like billiard balls on a pool table. If a player is precise enough (knows enough about his situation) then he can accurately understand where the balls will end up in the future. Any unpredictability arises from lack of knowledge not from inherent chaos.

The "billiard ball" hypothesis argues that once the stage of the universe has been set the rest of history follows inevitably from a series of cause and effect events. Ultimately there is order though it is hidden behind the great complexity of the universe. If it were actually possible to have complete knowledge of physical matter and all of the laws governing that matter at any one time, then it would be theoretically possible to compute the time and place of every event that will ever occur. The Deists would exalt causality, stating that everything is a result of the cause in front of it and attributing the first cause, the primary mover, as God.

Einstein would further the model of the deterministic universe by identifying time as a dimension with much of the same properties as space. This meant that my perception of a past, present, and future is an illusion. Time is a block, to be warped by gravity and speed to be sure, but a physical presence that assured that the future was as set in stone as the past. Think of it like a movie, the individual frames contain no motion, but when viewed in sequence the illusion of motion appears. This is a similar view that many Christians will make of time, especially Augustine, stating that God is outside the flow of time as its creator.

Quantum mechanics was the first major rival to both Newton and Einstein. When looking at the behavior extreme small scale particles, scientists started to discover a lack of predictability when applying traditional physics. As the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states, at atomic scales the paths of objects can only be predicted in a probabilistic way. In other words, chance governs the underlying foundation of our world. It is still a deterministic model, but one with a lot more uncertainty built in then in previous theories.

Science puts some meat on the bones of philosophy, offering a variety of theories grounded in experimentation and observation. Unfortunately it is still offers a remote view; there is nothing about neutrinos that will affect our behavior as an individual.