We’re from Texas, essentially the bible belt’s buckle. That’s just how many Christian Evangelicals are. They’re all over the place. More than anything I was just shocked by how much average Americans not only fail to understand a significant portion of the southern population, but view them as lunatics. Sad.

I disagree with a whole lot of what your typical Christian Evangelical believes, assuming that there even is a ‘typical’ Evangelical. That is to say that I disagree with the substance of their faith. Even more significant though is that I disagree with their very definition of faith. I think that second point, subtle but important, is where most people fail to understand evangelicals. Their view of faith is somewhat unique and I personally have very mixed feelings about it. In a way, it amazes me how strong some of their beliefs are. The appearance of absolute certainty, regardless of whether or not it is merited, can be seductive. It feels good to be certain, to know rather than to just think or hope. Nevertheless, at what point does certainty become delusion? If someone living in a world full of murderers says that they have faith in the existence of love, the tenacity of their faith is admirable. If someone standing firmly on the ground states their faith in the nonexistence of gravity, is that the same? Clearly not.

In my view, to have faith is to admit that you are uncertain. Faith and certainty are mutually exclusive. It is to say that I believe and that I have good reason to believe, even if I do not have conclusive evidence. That, however, is very different from saying that I believe, no matter what. The first view involves taking what good evidence and reason you have, admitting that it could still go either way, and then taking a leap of faith to choose one. The second is far more than just a leap. You may even say that it involves no leap at all. You have faith simply because. All evidence to the contrary is either a lie, a confusion of reality, or something placed there for the sole purpose of creating doubt. That is (my view of) evangelical faith. Lack of doubt is their measure of faithfulness.

To me, however, reason and emotion are both fundamental to our humanity and therefore both must be incorporated in faith, with each supporting, but not subduing the other. Evangelical faith is about emotional commitment. Reason is used to analyze and sort through beliefs, but not in arriving at the beliefs themselves. It’s not what you believe after having asked the questions, it’s about not asking the questions at all. What do we make of this enormity (it really is enormous) of evidence that the Earth is billions of years old, that animals preceded us for millions of years, and that we seem to be a highly sophisticated and unique offshoot of apes? Do we revise our view of God’s creation? Is there some potential reconciliation between what we believed before and what countless evidence is now telling us? I say yes. The evangelical says he believes what he believes. There is no need to even answer the question, because questioning reflects lack of faith.

There’s a flip-side to this though, one which many people of a different group are reluctant to acknowledge. If we evolved under a fixed, limited set of conditions, that means that our perception is also fixed and limited. We have no direct telescope into the absolute. What we see, hear, and calculate cannot be everything that is. That’s very different from saying that what we see and discover is false or irrelevant, a presumption that is quite without justification. It is to say, however, that even belief rested on science requires at least some amount of faith. In a much more nuanced way of course, but we must admit there is no certainty on either side. There are just degrees of plausibility and implausibility.

That’s it, though. I disagree with them. They disagree with me. We all happily disagree. Isn’t that fine when it comes to faith, though? If you acknowledge, like I do, that faith by its definition requires uncertainty, you find agreeing to disagree as the only logical conclusion. None of us really knows, so who are we to force what we believe on others? So long as they don’t try to impose their beliefs on me or keep other people from living in accordance with their own beliefs, we can live in perfect harmony with one another. That’s where the problems begin though.

Many evangelicals are bigoted and try not just to live in accordance with their beliefs, but to influence policy and laws in ways that violate the freedom of others. Many people do this actually, but evangelicals are just the most overt about it. I believe in respecting a plurality of beliefs. That’s ‘believe’ in a different sense from my own religious beliefs though. If your ‘belief’ is that everyone should live life your way and my ‘belief’ is that people should live life the way they want, I’m perfectly happy to shove my ‘belief’ down your throat. A belief in freedom and mutual respect is separate from the particular beliefs that we would realize within that freedom. So I don’t just disagree with the bigotedness of many evangelicals, I get angry about it. The ‘certainty’ of their beliefs becomes something more than just a reflection of a disagreement on what faith is. It becomes a threat to all those who, out of a commitment to mutual respect, agree to disagree. Politics becomes an arena to see who has the biggest guns or the most people, rather than a method for reasonable people to find mutual ground, despite their disagreements.

I will say one last thing before I end this ridiculously long post. If there is anything more annoying than bigotry, it’s bigotry masquerading under the guise of neutrality. Much of the religious backlash being experienced in America is not just thick-headedness that came out of nowhere, but a response to the country’s failure to stay on the proper side of the line between mutually respecting beliefs and making religious beliefs sit in the back of the bus. Putting aside science class, is it really necessary that creationism or ‘intelligent design’ be completely barred from any public school classroom? Is it really that big of a problem that we have references to God in our pledge of allegiance, on our currency, or on historical government buildings? In Jesus Camp, there was a radio talk-show host who was criticizing the camp for ‘indoctrinating’ and ‘brainwashing’ the children. He went on about how children should be given the right to choose and develop their own thoughts. I saw no evidence of coercion at the church services. All the children who were there seemed to want to be there, even if I’m sure their parents had some influence. Does he really think that public schooling isn’t indoctrination? That raising and educating children involves giving them a menu of options and asking them to choose what faith and culture they’d like? Pluralism and secularism are two completely different things. That radio host, along with a good portion of America’s ‘open-minded’ freethinkers, should acknowledge that.

Can Multi-Payer Financing Achieve Single-Payer Spending Levels?

1. My professors all seem to be very sensible people; some more than others though. Some are simultaneously hilarious, congenial, and brilliant, while others fall closer to but still far from the caricature of the professor who lives and breathes law. None, however, are aggressive enough to put the fear of God in you.

2. The Socratic Method is what it is. Extremely effective at having you make sure that you understand the reading assignments, while frustrating for someone who much rather be given a reasonable amount of time to articulate his thoughts on paper. There’s no point in criticizing it and I’m well aware of the numerous reasons why it is relevant for people expecting to some day become attorneys. Still, no matter how comfortable I might become with speaking my thoughts to a large group of people, and I have a lot of work to do in that area, I don’t see myself becoming a litigator.

3. The big surprise this week has to do with the student body, or at least that portion of it that I’ve interacted with in my section. Coming from a school where maybe two or three students out of forty had any intellectual interest in the material that they were studying beyond getting through it and finding a job, I expected to just be blasted away by dozens of super-cerebral and aggressive overachievers on my first day here. Truth is my section consists of mostly amiable and laid-back, although clearly intelligent people. Yes, there are the aggressive types who seem as if they’d allocate time for sleep, food, and family based on the probability of each activity’s furthering them along towards a Supreme Court clerkship. They make up only a small portion of the class though and, while I admire their dedication and am slightly envious of their speaking abilities, it’s quite clear to me that I simply don’t belong on that track. Life to me is a mosaic of many valuable and necessary pieces, with a successful career being only one of them. There comes a point at which you must say that enough is enough, or your ambition will strip you of all that can add meaning to this competitive, conditional world of ours.

I think that’s an interesting topic to close this post on: conditionality. I’ve always been a very close-knit person who prefers having a few very personal relationships over befriending lots of people. I’m not going to claim that it’s the right way to be, but I will say this: we need more unconditionality in the world. Cynical as it may sound, the odds are that 99% of the people with whom you associate have a calculated reason for why they interact with you, completely independent of who you are. If the incentives were to be taken away, so would their ‘friendship’. I think that part of growing up involves learning to accept this conditionality and working with it (networking), something which I need to grow more comfortable with, but part of being wise and human involves not losing sight of what unconditional friendship and respect truly means. I think this explains a lot of why, no matter how much society advances in many areas and you start seeing all kinds of new thoughts about how to live and who to be, religion and family remain the core of mainstream society. We are humans and we know how to work, we know how to reason, and we know how to ‘network’, at least most of us do… but we can’t survive on those alone for very long. I couldn’t survive without the love of my wife and my family, or the true respect and friendship that, every now and then, I run into.

Whoa there, tiger. Well, at least he’s being honest about his views, and he’s acknowledging that it’s implementation would be impossible at the present time. The fact that he sees it as a theoretical preference does, however, give me pause. So, it’s not O.K. to force free-riders to purchase health insurance for themselves, but it’s perfectly fine to force the entire country under a single health plan?

The Healthy Americans Act (cheesy name aside) stands, at present, as one of the most viable options for applying some reason to our health insurance system; or lack thereof. It’s bi-partisan support is well-deserved, as it carries features suited for a variety of philosophical perspectives.

‘Someone who makes $75K a year, doesn’t buy health insurance and shows up at the emergency room to get health care is taking advantage of the current, no-mandate system’

Sorry Obama, he’s right. I’m not a politican, so I don’t have to worry about kissing the rear-end of anti-government southerners. I understand why you do though. I bet you’d have a different position if you weren’t running for office.

Against Intellectual Monopoly

Any omnivorous person should watch this footage to the point at which they are no longer comfortable, and that point will likely be before the end for many. Although the website is devoted to promoting vegetarianism, I’d say that it speaks just as much for the promotion of humanely produced meat. Yes, some will call that an oxymoron, but there are many people out there who believe that it is cruel and immoral to allow this kind of animal suffering just to shave a dollar or two per pound off the price of meat, yet they don’t believe that veganism or vegetarianism is necessary. Yes, it costs more to buy meat that doesn’t treat animal suffering as an ‘efficiency’ mechanism, but for the vast majority of people the extra costs would be such a small portion of their income that it boils down to a matter of priority and will rather than one of means. The nutritional benefits of such meat are also important, but secondary.

Perhaps there are even some people out there who can watch the video and simply continue with their normal eating habits. That’s fine, but at least they won’t be able to hide behind the veil of ignorance that large meat producers rely on to keep consumers buying $3/lb ground beef. There is no such thing as a free lunch. For meat, milk, and eggs to be cheap, the costs must be shifted elsewhere. This video reveals the primary destination of those costs quite vividly. The environment gets its own share as well.

Americans Have Best Cancer Survival Rates

McCain Analysis

Obama Analysis

I’m not sure exactly how ‘objective’ these are, but it seems that, at least in this round, McCain’s plans came out ahead.