Tag Archives: philosophy

Same Sex Marriage Discussions on Facebook, Part II

Posted on August 8, 2010 | 3 Comments

Read Part I here.

*Rhetoric is winning the day.  Both Christians and non-Christians supported same sex marriage, and employed a healthy dose of rhetoric and buzz words heavily laden with emotional meaning to assert their views.  Most, though not all, hadn’t a clue what those buzzwords meant.

*”You’re advocating discrimination!”  Not in that sense, no.  It’s the same discrimination made towards polygamy, polyamory, polyandry or any other relationship that doesn’t serve a social purpose as effectively as a marriage with one mother and father.  Prop 8 draws distinctions among different types of relationships–same as when the law refuses to put two college roomies living together on par with a married man and woman, but it does not discriminate towards individuals.

*”You’re denying gays and lesbians equality and fairness.  You’ve got the right to marry and they don’t.”  Actually, gays and lesbian individuals have the exact same rights as I.  Any gay man can marry any woman of any race that consents and is of the minimum age, and the same is the case with me.  What ssm advocates are pressing for is the elimination of the gender requirement and the wholesale changing of the meaning of marriage.   At bottom, the principle behind all this is the notion that marriage is a mere social construction, that anyone can define a family any way he chooses, with government/societal approval.  Nature no longer defines the institution, it is subject to whim.  When this idea takes root, there will be plenty of negative consequences.

I realize this might not hit you square between the eyes, so let me elaborate by quoting Greg Koukl:

“Smith and Jones both qualify to vote in America where they are citizens. Neither is allowed to vote in France. Jones, however, has no interest in U.S. politics; he’s partial to European concerns. Would Jones have a case if he complained, “Smith gets to vote [in California], but I don’t get to vote [in France]. That‚s unequal protection under the law. He has a right I don’t have.” No, both have the same rights and the same restrictions. There is no legal inequality, only an inequality of desire, but that is not the state’s concern.  The marriage licensing law applies to each citizen in the same way; everyone is treated exactly alike. Homosexuals want the right to do something no one, straight or gay, has the right to do: wed someone of the same sex. Denying them that right is not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.”

*Many mentioned “love” as a reason why they support same sex marriage.  In other words, we should love and accept gays and lesbians, showing compassion for them.  I agree fully with that.  My discussion partners carried that on further, however, suggesting that means lending support for same sex marriage.   My question: does “love” mean you must support and accept everything the beloved does or desires?  I’m glad my parents, friends, and co-workers don’t think so.  Whenever I do something that is morally wrong, harmful to myself, or harmful to others, many voices step in to voice loving opposition.  A few friends knocked some sense into me during my college days when I chased around a few girls that were bad news.  This is common sense to most of us, but why does this ethic suddenly fly the coup when it comes to homosexual behavior?  It is this lifestyle and behavior which same-sex marriage legitimizes by government fiat (it does other destructive things too).  Most ssm advocates will admit this, that its not about benefits and such: it is about social acceptance of homosexual relationships.  SSM places homosexual relationships on par with heterosexual ones, and this is what they’re after.

*Now, I know many earnestly desire such acceptance.  Even if I conceded that it social acceptance of homosexual relationships is a thing to be desired, why think it’s a “right”?

*How does same sex marriage harm others and society?  How do legitimizing homosexual relationships do so?  Many have misconstrued this issue by making it an individual thing.  They’ve asked, incredulously, “Rich, how does the homosexual couple next door hurt you at all?”  The answer is that it doesn’t, but that’s not the issue. 

Ideas have consequences. Let’s start there. The ideas of the “sexual revolution” of the 60′s, for instance, have wreaked havoc on society. Ask anyone who grew up in a divorced home how those ideas have affected them. Yes, the bedroom …activity of the couple next door might not affect *me* as an individual, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about ideas and morality enforced through public policy.  The striking down of Prop 8, by the way, was an enforcement of certain ideas and morality regarding marriage. We conservatives aren’t the only ones seeking to enforce ideas and morality through law.

Cars are designed for a purpose, with certain specifications of use. If I piss in the gas tank or drive it on the bottom of a lake (if I use it against its design, in other words), its going to break down. Likewise, humans are designed too. This design shows itself on every plane: physical, emotional, relational, sexual, etc. If someone behaves in a way that cuts against that design, problems happen. If I drink myself into a stupor every weekend, my liver is gonna shrivel to the size of a rasin. And so on. When it comes to homosexual behavior, this is easiest to see on the physical plane (no anatomy lesson needed), but you can see it on the other planes too: relationally, men and women fit like “hand in glove.” There is something that each gender possesses that the other lacks.  It’s not just that they’re merely “different,” but complimentary.  And it’s not a mere personality or feelings issue either, as in “my friend and I really get along well,” or “my romantic partner and I ‘click.’  I feel alive when we’re together!” but a deeper, more fundamental nature thing…anyone, religious or none, can see this.

For more specifics, some chapters in the books Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexual Debate* has some.

*Children need and deserve a relationship with both his/her mom and dad.  The optimal family structure for a child’s well being is one in which a mom and a dad are present.  I reckognize, of course, that not every kid gets this.  Some come from single parent homes, and it is not always due to that single parent.  In these situations, we do all we can to care and support that parent and the child.  Some children from these homes turn out allright afterall, oftentimes due to the heroic efforts of the single parent or a close mentor.  For some, one parent is abusive, and its better to be away from that adult.  Whatever the situation, though, very few would go on to balk at the general principle above, and few would suggest that those family structures are just as preferrable to those with a mother and father. 

There is a boat load of research backing this up (see the footnotes), but you don’t need to pour over studies to see that.  Experience confirms it as well.  When I worked as a teacher in an inner city school, if I had a dollar for every tired and haggard single mom that came through my classroom door dragging an out of control teenage boy with her, no father in sight, I coulda retired a while back.  If I were a bettin’ man, I’d bet she’d prefer to have a father in the picture.

Legalizing same sex marriage scoffs at the principle by asserting that there’s no real benefit to having both a mother and a father in the home.  Everything jr gets from dad he can get from another mom, and everything jr gets from mom he can get from another man.  We really should pause and ponder before we embrace that idea.

*Question for those who advocate for same sex marriage: do you really believe that men and women are completely interchangeable as parents?

*I also reckognize that not every marriage has children in it.  Some earnestly desire to conceive, but for some reason can’t, while others remain childless by choice for one reason or another.  If I may use a humorous illustration: not everyone uses ash trays for ashes…some use them for food.  Just because some use an ash tray as a food container, though, doesn’t negate its intended use…in the same manner, just because some marriages don’t have children doesn’t mean that bonding mother and father to child and mother and father to each other is not an essential purpose of marriage.  Exceptions don’t trump the general principle.

*A few in the discussions brought up our racial past, seeking to make a connection.  You know, the ‘ol “they said the same thing about interracial marriage way back when.”  There’s one huge difference here: race is incidental to marriage, but gender is essential to it.   There are no significant differences to differing races that matter to marriage.  Just look at it biologically: men of any race and women of any race have the plumbing to “get the job done.”  A white man can mate with a black woman and produce a healthy child.  There are enormous differences between the genders, though, that matter tremendously to marriage and raising children.  Again, think of it biologically.  As I’ve already mentioned, the same applies when it comes to raising children.  The genders are complimentary.

Dennis Prager puts it nicely:

There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is moral and rational; separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is not.

Frank Beckwith elaborates more on the legal side why the analogy fails.

*At this point I should probably mention the recent studies that purported to show that kids do as well with same sex parents as they do with opposite sex parents, because someone mentioned those studies.  When I asked her for details, she failed to provide any, preferring instead to ridicule.  There are two that I’m aware of.  One comes from the United States National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study and the other is a summary of studies by Judith Stacey and Tim Biblarz.

Both have been subject to much criticism. For the first, the sample size was quite small–78 children born to lesbian couples, plus a control group.  In addition, the lesbian couples were not randomly sampled, but instead recruited from lesbian and gay groups/communities.  It might be tough to get a random sample for a study like this, but the mere fact that they were non-randomly selected volunteers biases the results.

Furthermore, ethnicity and region of residence differs between the groups too.  There were many more minorities and those from the South in the control group.  As much as we might not like to admit it, that skews the results too.  Finally, the study made heavy, though not exclusive, use of self-reporting from the lesbian mothers.

As to the second, the authors actually end up saying that women are better: two women are better than a man and a woman.  In other words, totally get rid of dad, because he is disposable.  This is far different from saying the gender of parents doesn’t matter (which is controversial enough).  Here are a few quotes:

“Two women who choose to parent together provide a ‘double dose of middle-class feminine approach to parenting.’”

“Women parenting without men scored higher on warmth and quality of interactions with their children than not only fathers, but also mothers who coparent with husbands.”

“If contemporary mothering and fathering seem to be converging,… research shows that sizable average differences remain that consistently favor women, inside or outside of marriage.”

 

(HT: Jennifer Roback-Morse)

This should give us great, great pause in jumping on the Stacey-Biblarz bandwagon.  We ought not blithely throw these studies around gleefully. The idea that fathers really aren’t needed, for one, has been tried on extensively in the inner cities and found wanting. More is found here.

At some point, dissenters usually respond by saying, “well, I was raised by only my mom, and I turned out ok.”  I’m glad, and many single parents deserve a huge pat on the back and much support, but it is odd that when we are talking about general societal trends, people’s first response is to turn it a) individual (*I* turned out ok), and b) feelings focused (I didn’t *feel* a difference).  We’re so individualistic that that is our knee jerk reaction. 

Remember, I nor anyone else is saying that any and all kids raised by some arrangement other than a mother and father will 100% turn out “bad” or that you as an individual are ”messed up.”  I don’t know your situation individually.  I just know the trends and I know the human design I see in nature.  What I am saying is that there is a huge trend in society that shows moms and dads matter.  Statistically and generally experientially, it affects children.  Check out the links I provided, and think back to my illustration with the inner city.  Sure, in my time as a teacher there, I met plenty of well-adjusted kids raised by single parents, or in some cases, same-gender parents.  But those were dwarfed by the numbers the other way.

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Same Sex Marriage Discussions on Facebook, part I

Posted on August 8, 2010 | 1 Comment

I recently participated in a few discussions on Facebook regarding Judge Walker’s ruling overturning Proposition 8.  Here are some reflections on those discussions:

*As weird as it sounds, I originally jumped in because I didn’t really want to.  A friend of mine recently told me that, “if you want to grow, you must put yourself in increasingly uncomfortable situations.”  I didn’t want to get involved in these discussions because I admit I was a bit intimidated.  Advocating the biblical point of view when it comes to homosexuality and/or same sex marriage, or many times even asking challenging questions of those who approve of homosexual behavior/relationships,  gets mental daggers and verbal rocks thrown your way.  I don’t like that any more than the next soft-skinned, comfortable American.  I realized my feelings on the matter, and jumped right in.

Most of the people, though, were pretty respectful.  There were only a few who spewed vitriol.   Not too bad.  When folks do that–when they play the ‘ol “you’re ignorant/bigoted/hateful/unloving/judgemental/ugly” card–they need to be called out.   Far too often, conservatives and Christians allow themselves to be bullied around by that sort of tactic.  We somehow think we have something to apologize about in those situations.  The Church has plenty to apologize about, but name calling isn’t an indication of that.  People do that so much because it works…it often culls people into silence.

So time to speak up and call a spade a spade.  “Calling out” is what I did.   Name calling is not an argument…it’s a verbal temper-tantrum because someone disagrees with you, and that’s it.  Saying I’m wrong is fine.  Critiquing my view with toughness is fair game.  But leaninig on the faithful “you’re ignorant!” response shows that you’ve got nuthin.

*This would be a great time for churches to step up and educate their flocks on both the biblical view of marriage in general, the biblical view of homosexual behavior, the public welfare arguments against same sex marriage, and how to advocate for those in a compassionate manner. This is an awesome opportunity for churches to inform and equip, but my hunch is that it won’t happen. Most will sit by and let other outlets woo with rhetoric. Most won’t go near the topic and will stay silent. There are some apologetic organizations out there doing a stellar job on this front, but few churches, though that’s just a hunch.  As much as I hate to bag on the church (it is a favorite pass time of Christians and non-Christians alike.  Very common for Christians to bash the Church and apologize incessantly, much more rare to encourage and spur it on.), I just gotta say it.

*Many have misunderstood the role religion has played in this, and have also misunderstood the legitimacy of relgion in this debate. First, I, and others, are completely within our bounds to let our views be informed by the Bible or any other holy book, and we are completely within our First Amendment rights in having our voting convictions informed by such Scriptures. This happens all the time with more liberal views, in fact, with virtually no one raising an eye brow. How many times have I seen religious people reference the Scriptures and/or make religiously motivated appeals for health care reform (Obama himself did it!), outlawing capital punishment, offering contraceptives in schools, and, yes, the legalization of same sex marriage? Answer: often, but no one, and I mean no one, cries foul because they violate the Establishment Clause or because they are religious in nature. The debates in those instances are on the merits of the appeals themselves (“does the Bible really call for the outlawing of capital punishment?” for instance), which is right where those debates should be…and it shouldn’t change here regarding Scriptural and religious references against same sex marriage.

A Muslim should be able to vote his conscience. A Hindu should be able to do the same. Ditto with an atheist, the secularist, and, dare I say, the Christian. All are fully within their citizenly rights to vote according to their convictions and worldview.  Having a religious “agenda” doesn’t disqualify someone from participating in politics.  The First Amendment guarantees it, not outlaws it.  If Joe from your local GLBTQ organization wants to address a Metropolitan Church congregation and talk to them about “Same sex marriage and the Bible” to get them to agree with him, more power to him. James from Focus on the Family should be able to do the same when it comes to lobbying the faithful for his point of view. One will be incredibly, horribly mistaken about his case, but not because he references religion in his appeal.

No one should have to shed their worldview and act/vote as a secularist, though I have the inckling that is what Christians are being asked to do, and no arguments should be swept off the playing field because they either comport with Scripture or come from religious people/organizations, though that is what’s happening here. Otherwise, laws against murder, theft, white collar crime (Jim Wallis, anyone?), perjury, and a host of other laws would be suspect.

I do admit, however, that there is a difference between being religiously motivated/allowing Scripture to inform beliefs, and making an argument in the public square of ideas about public policy. If I show up in the California legislature and argue against same sex marriage by opening up to Romans or 1 Corinthians, that is not gonna fly. In that sphere, I must make arguments (and there is a distinction between arguments and motivations, I hope you can see that) based on the public welfare, common morality, and nature, since people from a wide array of backgrounds find common ground with those things.

When it comes to this, folks on both sides of the debate somehow think that the only arguments against same sex marriage are religious in nature. The best arguments do not make reference to Scriptures, though they comport with them. I’ve made such arguments frequently and have seen others make them in the public square, but people just act like they don’t exist. Mostly they are dismissed, twisted into being religious, or ignored completely.

An aside: you can legislate morality, btw. Though Judge Walker scoffed at that, his own decision shows he tried. Legalizing ssm legislates a certain moral point of view.

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Can I Buy a Non-Sequitur?

Posted on August 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

 

I’ll believe in God etc one day when I’m certain I’m strong enough to do good in the world without them. Until then I will try to contribute to a higher good before taking solace in the symbols and prosey words that one religion has assigned it.

 

A Facebook friend attributed this to Pat Sajak.  I have no idea if Sajak actually said it, but I’m gonna roll with it.

Folks, this is what we call a non-sequitur…at least the first part.  His inability to do good apart from God (or apart from believing in God) is a good reason for rejecting the existence of God?  How does that follow?  At best, it’s a lame excuse.

It’s kind of like me saying, “I’ll believe in farmers when my stomach is big enough such that I can eat a 100 oz. steak in one sitting.”

On the second half of the quote, here was my response to my friend: Sajak spoke of a “higher good.” If God doesn’t really exist, and He’s just a cultural projection or something of the sort, the “higher good” turns out to be the herd instinct. That’s not very…high. In other words, in a world without a real supernatural God, what we *call* good is nothing of the moral sort: its merely behavior that has helped us survive up untl the present as a species…that’s not “good” in any moral sense, its just survival.
In my mind, if Sajak’s attitude is the way to go, we’re all shuffling chairs on the Titanic. He can behave in a way he calls “good” without believing in any specific religion (people do it all the time), but his beliefs won’t cohere with his actions….to continue with the above analogy on farming, it’s kinda like a suburbanite sitting down to a meal of eggs and bacon who doesn’t believe in the existence of farming.

I know, I know: don’t expect a game show host to follow logic in spiritual and philosophical things.  People on Facebook were giving “amens” left and right on it, though, so I just gotta say, you know?

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Dealing with an Atheist Gadfly, Concluded

Posted on July 1, 2010 | 4 Comments

Read the first post here.

Some of you have asked how it all went…it went mighty well, thank you.

It all went down like this: the Christian student group I sponsor at school had an end-of-the-school-year party, and I crashed it.  Yep.  I let them mingle and eat the pizza for a bit, then gathered the group together (kinda large…about 25 or so, most of which I had never seen in the club before.  Funny how that happens when you bring pizza and make it a party) and went at it.  I don’t think they were expecting that, even though I told them a few days before what I wanted to do.  I think they just expected me to briefly announce something and back off.  Well, that is not my style.  :)

First, I recapped what happened for those that weren’t there, then I had those that were there for the conversation rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 meaning the atheist totally walked all over them, 10 meaning that the Christians defended the faith exceptionally well.  Everyone gave a 4 score or below…which is an F.

I pointed this out to them.  My intent in this point, I told them, was not to put them down and make them feel bad about themselves, but to give them a chance to realistically assess their ability to articulate their faith and to handle themselves in a conversation like that.  Friends hold up mirrors when appropriate.  We went on to discuss the challenges that lie ahead for them in college and beyond.  The challenges are far from insurmountable, but when an unprepared Christian with a toddler’s ability to defend the faith and think through tough questions meets a hostile secular environment that *appears* intellectual and learned (key word right there, appears), the result is that usually the Christian ends up walking away from Christ sooner or later.

This all was a great reality check for them.  I’ve discussed it with most of them before, but, as Hugh Hewitt says, repetition is a precondition of success.  They need to hear that message over and over again, for experience has taught me that their prior mental habits and ways of talking die hard: most of the times I say it to them, they nod in agreement then go right back to faith and feeling talk.  Hey, it’s the religious diet they’ve been brought up on in youth group, so what do you expect?

The first day we didn’t cover any specific objections the atheist had.  We spent most of the rest of the time walking through how to handle a conversation with an aggressive contrary person.  This is all tactics, not specifics.  The atheist in the group (I got confirmation that he was just there to argue, btw) was a total steamroller.  He would make an aggressive accusation that usually involved attacking strawmen or using loaded language–more on that stuff later–and as soon as the Christians in the group would start answering the charge, he’d interrupt, change the subject, and make another charge.  They really didn’t know what to do with the guy.  I talked about how to reign the conversation in, how to keep it on topic, and how to graciously hold the other person’s feet to the fire on his use of loaded language.  This is a crucial lesson to learn, for most I’ve encountered don’t know how to identify loaded words that have an emotional impact but little argumentative force.  Most simply let the emotive power of the words fluster them, and they accept the legitimacy of the terms without question.  This is bad strategy.

Next we discussed how to go on the offensive a bit with questions of our own.  Why assume the burden of proof on everything and let the other person control the conversation?  Everyone in the discussion has a worldview; we’ve got our sticky parts to explain, but the atheist has more!  Why should we have to always be in the “hot seat?”  We went over a few easy, simple questions to ask in any conversation that are gracious, yet at the same time force the other person to do his fair share of ‘splainin.

I also spent some time on discussing the atheist’s use of straw men.  Some of the objections he had involved him foisting trumped up beliefs onto the Christians, then attacking those.  Example: at one point in the conversation he said, “so let me get this straight.  You guys believe that God fathered himself through a virgin, then was tortured to death to pay a punishment that he himself inflicted in the first place?”  There are so many straw men there in that one question that it’s hard to know where to begin.  For starters, Christians don’t believe God fathered himself.  We are trinitarians, not modalists.  Three persons, one substance.  That is why we are comfortable saying that there is one God substance, that Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all God, yet Christ prayed to the Father often.  Hard to totally wrap my mind around that, granted, but God as Trinity is a world away from that guy’s rubber dummy.  The “Father/Son” titles of the first and second persons of the trinity do not connote any physical siring on the Father’s part.  God the Father did not physically sire God the Son (or Himself, for that matter); the titles are figurative, reflecting the intimate relationship they share with each other and of the roles each play functionally in the plan of salvation.  To suggest otherwise by charging that Christians believe God “fathered himself” is a laughable straw man.

I counseled the students to listen carefully in the conversation for straw men attacks because they occur frequently in conversations like these, and I gave them a few pointers on how to dismantle them.

That was the first day.  I told them to come back the next day to discuss specific objections.  I forgot, though, that I double booked that day, and I wasn’t even going to be on campus!  I was instead at a middle school about 15 minutes away doing presentations to the PE classes there about wrestling.  One of the presentations I was scheduled to give overlapped a bit with lunch at my school, so I was in a bit of a pickle.  Luckily, I had some assistants with me there, so I left them in charge of it during lunch and raced over to the high school so I could meet the kids for another lunch tutoring session.  It was a hard transition to swing, but with some considerable Providential assistance, I made it work.

About twelve or thirteen students returned that day.  We reviewed the previous day’s material, and then went over a few specific objections the atheist had.  We talked about God commanding the Israelites to wipe out the Caananites, a bit about “tolerance,” and a tad about freewill and determinism.  I’m surprised the atheist harped on that last one, for its an argument that’s been largely abandoned in philosophic circles.  His argument was that if God was omniscient (all-knowing), then that would exclude human freewill: God would know the future, including what I would do tomorrow.  Being God, his knowledge would be perfect and certain, therefore there’s no way I could choose otherwise.  If God knows that I’ll eat an orange for breakfast tomorrow, that means I have to eat that orange.  I am not free to choose.

The problem with this argument is that it does not follow that if God knows I’ll eat the orange that I therefore have to eat the orange.  All that follows is that I will eat the orange, not that I must.  There is a difference.  To see this, think about the direction of causality: does God’s knowledge cause my action, or vice versa?  For the person to show that God’s knowledge excludes human free will, he must show that God’s knowledge causes me to eat that orange, but that is a pretty tough thing to show.  How does merely knowing event X will happen, even if that knowledge is certain, cause event X?  Knowledge causes jack squat.

A much better way to look at it is to view it from the opposite direction: my actions causes God’s knowledge.  This doesn’t mean his knowledge is any less certain or perfect.  It just means that in the future if I choose to eat cereal instead, that will be the content of God’s knowledge.

If this is still a bit fuzzy, think of it in possible worlds terms.  A possible world is simply a fancy philosophical way of thinking about a way things could be.  The actual world, including the future events that will happen, is one possible world.  A world in which I choose to eat an orange is a possible world; a world in which I choose to eat cereal is another possible world.  A world in which I choose to eat oatmeal and play the piano (rather than wrestle) is another possible world.  Theoretically, there are infinitely many possible worlds: worlds which are logically possible (a world in which a square circle exists is not possible.   Since that concept is contradictory, it is not a possible world) but which might or might not be actualized.

For every possible world in which God exists (some think he exists in every possible world, making him a necessary being…another post for another time, perhaps), he is omniscient…without getting too far into the details, I’ll just say that it comes along with the territory of being God.  We therefore say that God’s omniscience is necessary: he must be omniscient.  It is impossible for him to be not omniscient.
This does not mean, however, that the content of God’s knowledge is necessary.  The content of God’s knowledge varies with every possible world.  In a possible world in which I eat an orange, that is the content of God’s knowledge; in a possible world in which I eat oatmeal, that is the content of his knowledge.  In every possible world, my actions are freely chosen, yet God is still omniscient.  My actions cause His knowledge.  It does not follow that his knowledge is not certain or it is somehow tarnished.  No meaningful definition of omniscience is sullied.

Heady stuff, I know…But I explained that to them, and wrapped up with some more general perspective.  I gave them a few resources for further study (a few Greg Koukl books, an str youth website, and Love Your God with All Your Mind by JP Moreland), and sent them on their way.
The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive.  Students told me later that the tutoring sessions created much good conversation outside my classroom, which was one of the goals.  I’ve also received some messages recently from students saying that they’ve begun to frequent the websites I referenced….

Good stuff, good stuff.

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May Cooler Heads Prevail–No Pun Intended

Posted on June 7, 2010 | Leave a comment

One of the many academic weaknesses of most high school students is making the jump from mere persuasive writing to research writing.  The senior students I’ve taught this year are decent at writing persuasive essays.  They can write a structured essay complete with some sort of debateable thesis, and they can elaborate on it some and most attempt to give a bit of support.  Ok, that’s a good start.
But research writing, which is the kind of writing required for my Research Methods class, is a horse of a dif’rent color.  The rigor of analysis and depth of evidence that a research paper calls for is quite a jump in sophistication for the typical high school student.

Throughout the year I have grown increasingly frustrated at the task of helping students make this jump.  At times, it seems like climbing K2, for their bad habits are quite recalcitrant to correction.  It can be done, though.

I’m going to seek to correct two such habits tomorrow.  Well, let me take it down a notch: just one lesson won’t cure the itch, but it’s a start.

What 99% of my students do when it comes to research is they decide what their thesis will be prior to any research.  This leads to them trying to fit the evidence to their previously conceived theses.  I recognize everyone has their biases, and this is almost impossible to avoid completely, but my students are champs at this.  It is very, very evident in their papers: almost all of them had immense difficulty dealing with opposing viewpoints with any sort of scholarly effort at all.  If they even addressed opposing viewpoints, they typically gave them nothing more than a handwave, as if their falsehood was obvious to all. 

All this was just one of the many signs of their cart-before-the-horse ways.

What I’m going to do tomorrow is show An Inconvenient Truth alongside a lecture from “the other side,” so to speak, by Jay Wesley Richards.  Most students–at least the ones who did their research reports on global warming (quite a few!)–aren’t even aware that there are doubts.  Most are quite content to take the prevailing popular story as axiomatic. 

After watching both films, their assignment will be to do a small amount of google research (there isn’t enough time to do in depth library  research that I’d normally like them to do…though a few might do that, who knows.  A general grasp of the issues and a broad overview of the evidence–which is what I’m shooting for–is quite accessible via google, so that will suffice for this assignment), then write an analytical essay evaluating the evidence of one of the films.  In their essay, they must make use of at least one researched source from each side, and though they must focus on one of the films in their essays, I expect them to work in the other film at points here and there.

The point of all this is to impress upon them the importance of a) not jumping to conclusions, b) honestly assessing both sides with as cool a head as possible, c) people can doubt popular “consensus” (assuming there is one here) and not be crazy–they deserve to be heard, and d) evidence, evidence, evidence.  I’m quite ok with them taking a position in their essay that I don’t hold.  Who knows, maybe I’m wrong…I have only done a small amount of research on the issue and I’m definitely fallible.  I’m open to evidence…but it must be evidence and it must be addressed analytically.  I simply want to impress upon them those four things I just mentioned, regardless of what side they end up coming down on. 

In the end, clever camera angles and emotional pulls do not win the day, though they might garner Nobel Prizes every once and a while…:)

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Round 2: Relativism in Public Schools

Posted on May 31, 2010 | 2 Comments

A “project” I have undertaken recently as a teacher in a public high school is to attempt to thaw the dogmatism of relativistic thinking amongst the students I teach. Over the past few years I have created some lessons in a unit that are designed to accomplish that purpose.

Some people might balk at this. They might express caution that such a venture could “get me in trouble” with parents and administrators, since the lessons question cherished beliefs and smack of “church and state” violation (despite the fact that I don’t bring up religion at all in the unit).

However, while very few other teachers waltz into such territory, I have found that I have little to fear regarding repercussions. After all, the lessons I have made that are designed to guide students in questioning relativism are very much in line with state-adopted Language Arts standards. Many are quite apprehensive and “jumpy” when it comes to touching controversial subjects, but as I quip quite often, “you’d be surprised by what you can get away with…if you know what you’re doing.”

Therefore, the obstacle I have run into is not the administrative resistance. In fact, the last time I taught these lessons, a representative from my district was observing me. After the lesson she glowed with interest, saying, “I just did not want the discussion to end! It was so interesting and needed!” This was coming from someone whom I have every reason to believe is quite secular in her thinking.

The biggest obstacles, rather, have come from the minds of the students themselves. Relativistic thinking is incredibly popular amongst youth today, and because I am conversing with fallen human beings with free will, there will always be those whom I can’t convince, no matter how powerful my arguments are and no matter how effective my communication tactics may be; that much has always been clear to me. Still, my students’ resistance to worldview correction, even when gentle and indirect, has baffled me. Getting them to question relativism—heck, even to grasp what relativism is and what the basic moral categories are—has been akin to asking a fish what wet feels like.

The lessons have not been without fruit, mind you. The proverbial light bulb over the head sparks on for some students. But every time I teach these particular lessons, the gargantuan nature of the task becomes more and more clear. What could be at the bottom of this recalcitrance?

I have always been baffled at how utterly relativistic students are. When I discuss this with them, many doggedly maintain their moral nonchalance even when doing so forces them to affirm the most outlandish and inhuman practices. During one such discussion, one of my students expressed doubt about whether infanticide in China was morally wrong. “It’s their culture and they think it’s right,” she maintained. That was the only justification she needed in her own mind. She could not get any deeper than that.  This came from a very sweet girl, but she just couldn’t connect the dots.

Though I have always been dismayed at how hard many cling to their dogmatism, it began to trouble me much more a month ago, the last time I taught on the topic. After discussing a few hypothetical moral scenarios and whether it was ok to judge the actions in them (actions in which people behave in racist ways. This was an attempt to pit dearly held postmodern values against each other in students’ minds, for example, non-judgmentalism vs. condemnation of racism and imperial oppression. The aim is to get them to choose the latter over the former.), we read an essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education written by a university professor. In the essay, the professor expresses much frustration over what he calls “absolutophobia,” his students’ unwillingness to condemn even the most horrible moral atrocities. He then goes on to point out the logical contradictions in such a stance, and he argues that acknowledging that absolutes exist doesn’t mean we are committed to inflexibility in dialogue and hatred of other cultures. We also read Shirley Jackson’s famous story “The Lottery,” in which a fictional small town holds a lottery each year…the “winner” gets stoned.

 Next, we discussed both the essay and the story in a Socratic Dialogue. What was interesting was not that the students maintained their relativism; that much I expect by now. What surprised me is that many had difficulty in even grasping the basic moral categories under discussion. Simon, the “absolutophobia” professor, obviously and clearly believed in absolutes, yet many of the students failed to understand that. When I asked them to summarize various parts of his essay, they made him out to be a relativist!

They did the same thing to me when I commented. To them, I, too, did not believe in absolutes; every time I would make a moral objectivist statement or ask a question that implied the existence of objective moral values, they would interpret me as being a relativist! Part of this was due to them not reading close enough (quite a few students do not take much interest in the readings and therefore do not read close enough to “get it right.”), but much of it was because they had not thought in objective moral categories much before. Therefore, when they encounter a moral objectivist, some hefty cognitive dissonance happens.  Either their relativistic framework has to give way, or the moral objectivist in front of them.  More often than not in that discussion, the former won. 

They have had much experience thinking in sociological categories, and their statements reflected this. Rather than talking about reasons why an action is right/wrong, they instead frequently focused on the sociological factors that caused the beliefs. They could not evaluate the beliefs and practices themselves, but they easily gave sociological causal explanations as to how they were accepted and really had difficulty fathoming the notion that there was more to be discussed.   They are so used to refraining from judgment when studying other cultures that they assume that it is somehow always out of bounds to judge.

They also thought in personal taste categories when it came to morality. Morally condemning actions and beliefs made about as much sense to them as morally condemning ice cream flavors.

Lastly, because we are in such an entitlement-centered culture, we become easily offended when others critique us. Our collective skin has become thin. Many, especially the young, don’t want to cause offense, so they go to extremes to avoid appearing accepting of any and all beliefs and practices.

All this does not mean they lacked any moral scruples whatsoever. Their moral intuitions would come out at certain points in our discussions, but they would express relativistic sentiments the next moment. When I tried to point out gently how they were trying to have it both ways, they had difficulty seeing the problem.

In the end, I tried to suggest that everyone, including the students themselves, makes moral judgments, that it is unavoidable, and therefore we shouldn’t worry about it. They saw my point that they themselves make moral judgments all the time despite claiming to be non-judgmental. I thought I had made a connection, but their reaction to that was surprising: they thought they should try harder to avoid judging!  It was like the fable of the man who was convinced he was dead.  All the doctors in the world couldn’t sway him, but one doctor had an idea: I’ll convince him that dead men don’t bleed, then I’ll show him that he bleeds!  The doctor amassed all the evidence he could and convinced the man that dead men don’t bleed.  Next, the doctor pricked the man’s finger, at which the man exclaimed, “I guess dead men do bleed afterall!”

I can give all the causal explanations I want, but in the end this boils down to suppressing the truth and exchanging the truth of God for a lie. That explains it best. We humans want to maintain our autonomy and moral independence at all costs. The existence of absolutes or objective moral values would be an obstacle to that desire. Relativism gives us intellectual justification to do what we want and feel good about it. We do not have to bend our knee, so we think, to any moral law or Moral Lawgiver. No moral law means no moral obligation. Everyone wins! Even though my students might not be consciously thinking that way, they think that way at some level. That is the only thing that fully explains my students’ recalictrance: they simply want to believe what they want to believe. It is as simple as that.

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When Cultural Sensitivity Jumps the Shark

Posted on May 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued one heckuva whopper:

International human rights organization Equality Now is stunned by a new policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for “federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ‘ritual nick’,” such as pricking or minor incisions of girls’ clitorises. The Policy Statement “Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors”, issued by the AAP on April 26, 2010, is a significant set-back to the Academy’s own prior statements on the issue of FGM and is antithetical to decades of noteworthy advancement across Africa and around the world in combating this human rights violation against women and girls. It is ironic that the AAP issued its statement the very same day that Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) announced the introduction of new bipartisan legislation, The Girls Protection Act (H.R. 5137), to close the loophole in the federal law prohibiting FGM by making it illegal to transport a minor girl living in the U.S. out of the country for the purpose of FGM.

FGM is a harmful traditional practice that involves the partial or total removal of the female genitalia and is carried out across Africa, some countries in Asia and the Middle East, and by immigrants of practicing communities living around the world, including in Europe and the U.S. It is estimated that up to 140 million women and girls around the world are affected by FGM. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated in 1997 that over 168,000 girls and women living in the U.S. have either been, or are at risk of being, subjected to FGM.

FGM is a form of gender-based violence and discrimination that is performed on girls to control their sexuality in womanhood, guarantee their acceptance into a particular community, and safeguard their virginity until marriage. Taina Bien-Aime, Equality Now’s Executive Director explains, “Encouraging pediatricians to perform FGM under the notion of ‘cultural sensitivity’ shows a shocking lack of understanding of a girl’s fundamental right to bodily integrity and equality. The AAP should promote awareness-raising within FGM-practicing immigrant communities about the harms of the practice, instead of endorsing an internationally recognized human rights violation against girls and women.”

 

News like this really puts postmodern types in a pickle.  My bet is that a whole slew of those sympathetic to postmodern leanings are pretty conflicted about this.  An oppressed class pitted against deference and non-judgmentalism toward cherished religious practices of other supposed oppressed cultures.  Boy, that’s a tough one…if you are bedazzled by the current po-mo zeitgeist.

To those folks: you wouldn’t be having those conflicted thoughts and feelings if you embraced the worldview of Jesus.

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