Tag Archives: Religion

Thoughts

The Biological Roots of the Self

Note: This post was originally a comment in a Facebook thread, the context of which has been totally lost to me. It was written 2-3 years into the my journey into spiritual doubt. While I don’t remember the Facebook thread that provoked the comment, I do remember the origin of the line of thought. Through casual conversations with my boss at work, I came to realize that almost everything I consider ‘me’ is rooted in genetics and circumstance. ‘American.’ ‘Male.’ ‘White.’ ‘Verbal.’ ‘Analytical.’ ‘Nerdy.’ ‘English-speaking.’ Once my brain and body are stripped away and Earth and all its cultures are left behind, what is left of me that is actually ‘me’? Even if we are resurrected after death as the Bible teaches, what would be left of us that was recognizable? This is another item that as I inhabit the life of faith I have to simply set aside as beyond knowing. (DL, June 13, 2023).

Is there any part of your consciousness that will survive the destruction of your brain?

Pointers to the answer:

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Faith

Conversation About Origins

Note: Until my early thirties I was a convinced Young-Earth Creationist. I firmly believed that the Earth is approximately 6,000 years old, and that the global flood of Noah as described in Genesis 6-9 was a historical event that occurred approximately 4,500 years ago. As described elsewhere, in September 2010 I began a new research project that led me to question my previous convictions. In the Spring of 2011 as my doubts mounted, I had the opportunity to speak with Ken Ham at a homeschool convention, and on his recommendation, wrote a later to one of Answers in Genesis’s staff members. This e-mail captures my thinking and research on this topic at that time in some detail. Dr. [Name Redacted] did in time respond (see the postscript at the end), but his answers were not sufficient to end my doubts. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)

Dear Dr. [Name Redacted]:

Ken Ham suggested I write you and gave me your e-mail when I approached him after one of his speaking engagements in the Spring.

I was reared in the church. I made a profession of faith at four. I was heavily involved in Child Evangelism Fellowship through junior high and high school. I took a bachelor’s and a master’s at Bob Jones University. In the ten years since, I have been heavily involved in Christian education and (on my own time) in Christian apologetics, often in regards to the scientific inadequacy of Neo-Darwinism and the evidence for Y.E.C. I have read fairly widely in the field of Y.E.C., most recently (as it happens) in Coming to Grips with Genesis.

Over the last ten to twelve months I have begun to seriously question the tenability of Young-Earth Creationism.
WIth that doubt (which has come to border very closely on flat disbelief), has come a concomitant and unsettling uncertainty regarding the veracity of the Scriptures as a whole. As you know, if Genesis isn’t true, we must seriously ask whether any of it is true.

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Politics

Just Words 1.2: The Atheist Betrayal

Note: This is the second post I wrote for the short-lived anonymous activist blog I started in early 2007 dedicated to strident Christian politics. It had been four years since I first heard of the concept of gay marriage, and I could see clearly which way the cultural winds were blowing. This was my attempt to fight for the culturally-Christian America of my youth. As described in the note to the first blog article, within a few months of starting the blog, I began to move away from Christian militancy and towards Libertarianism, motivated by the campaign of Ron Paul. Nevertheless, though my methods and political priorities have changed, I think the argument here is basically sound, as the continual encroachment of radical progressive fundamentalism throughout the West has shown. (DL, June 10, 2023). 

Judge Wolf’s ruling is . . . a treacherous collaboration with the evil empire which, though fallen in its Soviet form, lives yet in the ideology of godlessness that has been appropriated into the halls of American justice.
-Just Words 1.1

American Christians must wake up.

They must awaken to the imminent threats facing their civil and religious liberties–threats which cannot be overstated. There are forces at work in this country that are wholly dedicated to stamping out the social influence of America’s biblical heritage and of America’s Christians.  Their watchword is “tolerance,” but these are nothing less then the uncompromising partisans of a god-less ideology.

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Politics

Just Words 1.1: The Coming Oppression

Note: At the beginning of 2007 I started a short-lived blog. My most immediate inspirations were twofold: 1) a couple of my friends had blogs I enjoyed reading, and 2) I was inspired by the example of Demosthenes and Locke in Ender’s Game, anonymous online commentators who by the power of their words were able to influence society. My blog was hosted at arthegall.com and was anonymous. The articles I posted there were the most strident pieces of political activism I have ever written. At the time I was deeply invested in electing Christian politicians and establishing Christian values in society by fiat. However over the course of the 2008 election cycle my views moderated, and I became a libertarian, shifting from strong support for Alan Keyes to strong support for Ron Paul. In addition, not long after starting the blog I joined Facebook which became for fifteen years my primary mode of online expression. The blog petered out after only a few posts. (DL, June 7, 2023).

The ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
-Ronald Reagan

As you value your lives, your families, and your freedom, hear this:

Christians are today, this moment, in grave and imminent danger of having their civil liberties stripped from them by the U.S. government unless they forsake tenets of their faith that the state has now deemed incompatible with “engaged and productive citizens” (ruling ). Indeed, even now the shackles are being forged about their throats—while they sleep.

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Academic Writing

Theodore Parker: Gendarme of the Revolution

Note: This was my final paper for EN 841B: Transcendentalism, a seminar I took in the Fall of 2005 with Laura Dassow Walls, now of Notre Dame. It was a fascinating class with an excellent professor and a great text. I enjoyed writing this paper and in the process learned a lot about a topic that was of great personal interest at the time–America’s ideological history. The Fall of 2005 was a crazy semester in which I bit off far more than I could chew, so I took an Incomplete on this course and didn’t finish this paper till a year later in the Fall of 2006.

In recent years the ongoing revolution in American cultural life has become increasingly apparent. Best-selling books like Robert Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah and Bill O’Reilly’s Culture Warrior (and the controversy surrounding them) have underscored the increasing secularization and liberalization of a culture that was once decidedly Judeo-Christian in moral tone and worldview. And while this revolution has dramatically increased in rapidity and scope in recent decades, any student of American letters knows that cultural controversy and change is not a new phenomenon in America. Indeed, between the 1631 ruling of the general court of the Massachusetts Bay colony “that no man [should] be admitted to the freedom of [the] body politic, but such as [were] members of some of the churches within the limits of the same” and the 2003 ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court “that barring an individual from . . . marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution,” one can trace an almost regular series of controversial moments that have become landmarks in the history of America’s cultural revolution: the Half Way covenant of 1662, the print debates between Jonathan Edwards and Charles Chauncy in 1743 and the accompanying schism in Congregationalism, the 1805 appointment of Henry Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, Emerson’s 1838 address at the Harvard Divinity School, Charles Briggs’ 1891 inaugural address at Union Theological Seminary and his subsequent heresy trials, the 1925 Scopes trial, and the Supreme Court rulings on the Bible and prayer in the public schools in 1962-3. It is no coincidence that almost all of these controversies have been wholly religious in nature; before cultural practice can change, ideology must change. Change in belief paves the way for change in behavior. Neither is it a coincidence that the conservative faction in most of these crisis moments has espoused an ideology virtually identical to that of the Puritan divines of 1631 Massachusetts. For in a real sense, the history of America’s cultural revolution is the story of how the conservative Christian orthodoxy[1] of Massachusetts Bay (with its concomitant rules of behavior) has been gradually moved from the halls of power to the margins of society, challenged in each new generation by new foes in new spheres until finally those who will and can claim their ideological inheritance from the original Puritan divines are a fringe few, increasingly seen as narrow and extreme even in Christian circles.

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Academic Writing

Virtual Morality (2)

Making real choices in a virtual world

Note: This is the second of two papers on similar themes. (Read the first here.) I wrote both in the second year of my MA in English at Bob Jones University, the fundamentalist Christian school I attended for my BA and MA. Both capture well the moral tenor of my upbringing and of my beliefs at that time. I was raised in evangelicalism and on a diet of Rush Limbaugh. But since that time and these writings, some of my views have changed in important ways. At the time I wrote this paper, the term “sexual preference” was still commonly used throughout society to refer to a person’s sexual orientation, and it would be ten more years before reading Andrew Sullivan opened my eyes to the reality of sexual orientation as an innate characteristic of a person rather than a preference chosen willfully. This piece mischaracterizes that reality completely in ways that are homophobic. Very strong condemnatory language about sin was common in my sphere and vocabulary then (and for some time afterwards), and I believed the traditional Christian teaching that homosexual behavior is sin. For that reason, this paper will no doubt be offensive to some readers. Although I no longer think or speak of homosexuality in the homophobic terms I used here, there’s no doubt that I did for a long time. This piece is a reflection of that fact about my past. In regards to the piece more broadly, some of the core philosophical thesis still resonates with me. I still believe America suffers the social effects and disruption that come from lack of a shared moral center or objective foundation for shared morality–we have spent decades growing increasingly divided over morality. But I’m no longer certain to what extent such an objective foundation exists or how to find it if it does, and lacking that certainty, I find it harder to be a moral dogmatist on many matters, not only sexuality. In addition, having been thoroughly disillusioned by many right-wing sex scandals since and also more historically informed, I no longer see Bill Clinton as uniquely bad in his behavior or the GOP as ingenuous in its moral outrage. But for the record, I still think he abused his power in immoral ways and that Esquire’s cover photo was an inappropriate, sly celebration of his ‘prowess.’ As a side note, after researching for this paper, one of the dean of men’s staff confronted me about my late-night Internet searches on my work computer that were apparently related to homosexuality in some way. Looking back, amusing, but awkward at the time. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)

Perversity is acceptable in America; it’s the new freedom. Our honorable President has underscored this sobering reality yet again with his cover appearance on the December issue of Esquire magazine (a glossy purveyor of trendy American hedonism). The photo has been unofficially titled “Monica’s View,” and as incredible as it would have seemed to me two days ago, Clinton has indeed suavely offered his crotch to the American people.

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Gaming

Virtual Morality (1)

Making real choices in a virtual world

Note: This is the first of two papers on similar themes. (Read the second here.) I wrote both in the second year of my MA in English at Bob Jones University, the fundamentalist Christian school I attended for my BA and MA. Both capture well the moral tenor of my upbringing and of my beliefs at that time. I was raised in evangelicalism and on a diet of Rush Limbaugh. But since that time and these writings, some of my views have changed in important ways. In regards to the argument of this paper, the most significant change is that I have lost my former confidence in the Bible as the absolute, objective moral frame of reference for humans. As a result, the core imperative of this paper no long works for me. However, I still to this day embrace and affirm the central observation that a person’s moral decisions in a virtual space or video game are not without implications for their real-world thinking about morality. I still believe what we pretend to think or do can affect what we actually think and do in the real world. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)

In September 1987, Captain Picard’s Enterprise-D embarked on its maiden voyage. Captain James T. Kirk and his cronies had been replaced by a new crew with a new ship and new gadgets. Perhaps the most memorable of those new gadgets was a new kind of shipboard recreation chamber: the holodeck. A virtual-reality chamber featuring cutting-edge 24th-century technology, the holodeck used holograms, force fields, and semi-stable matter to create alternate realities indistinguishable from the real thing. It was a room where dreams came to life, and it quickly captured the imagination of Trekkers everywhere. Before long, the “holodeck” became verbal shorthand for the supreme realization of virtual reality.

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Politics

Taxes: more than duty

Note: This article was the staff commentary piece published in the Bob Jones University student newspaper The Collegian (Vol 12, No 12) on tax day, 1999. To this day I believe in and celebrate the citizen’s duty (and, especially in a democratic context, honor) to pay taxes. I find libertarian statements like ‘Taxation is Theft’ to be ridiculous and (especially when coming from a Christian) deeply disappointing. Historically speaking, we enjoy unheard of prosperity and freedom in America. Surely we should expect to have to pay for it. (DL, June 6, 2023)

It’s April 15, and many people have been thinking about what happens to their tax dollars. Some taxpayers are quite vocal in their disgust with government economic policy. Some criticism of the government is necessary to ensure accountability, but sometimes valid criticism can degenerate into an un-Christian, complaining spirit. When this happens, Christians commit a sin that resembles the Israelites’ grumbling in the wilderness.

When the Lord commanded men to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Mark 12:17), He made it clear that Christians are duty-bound to pay taxes. But paying taxes is more than a duty; it is actually an opportunity for Christians to serve God with their money. Paying taxes is equated with serving God in Romans 13. Paul says in verse six, “For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually about this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due.”

Governments are instituted by God. They are worthy of our tax dollars not because they are righteous, but because they do God’s work of governing. The Roman government did not spend tribute money entirely on enterprises that were pleasing to God. Tiberius, the Caesar to whom Christ was referring in Mark 12, used his fortune to support a perverted lifestyle. Yet Christ said to pay.

Obedience to Christ’s command requires more than an outward conformity to IRS policy. It requires a heart that joyfully submits to the Lord’s will. Moses referred to this principle of joyful service in his final message to the Israelites. He was admonishing them to serve the Lord. If you do not, he warned, curses will come “because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things” (Deut. 28:47). Moses said it was important to both serve with joyfulness and be glad for the Lord’s abundant blessings.

A complaining spirit is not only a failure to obey joyfully, but it also overlooks the benefits that our tax dollars bring us. Government money pays our firefighters, police officers and soldiers, Uncle Sam built the interstate system that helps many BJU students get home so quickly. “Your tax dollars at work” means air traffic controllers and effective sanitation. It means technology too. Thanks to the billions of dollars poured into NASA, we have everything from computers and communication satellites to velcro and solar-powered calculators.

We have so much to be thankful for. Let’s not forget our blessings and sin by grumbling as we pay our taxes.

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Fiction

What Happened One Christmas

Note: I wrote this story for my senior English class in high school. Reading it now causes me to cringe severely. It’s painfully bad in some respects, particularly in the way it mashes a hard Christian message on at the end despite being full of outlandish gore and alcohol consumption. It strikes me as very much the product of a Christian teen (it’s very teenagery) who was trying to cleverly push the boundaries while also maintaining a foot in the Christian camp. However despite it’s glaring flaws, it fascinates me because of how well it captures the creative and cultural influences that were active in my life during high school. The writing is heavily influenced in particular by three sources I clearly hear in the background of some passages: I hear the early Internet (particularly an old web series called Grudge Match) in the irreverent comedy and outlandish violence; I hear Tom Clancy, particularly Clear and Present Danger, in the descriptions of the elf commandos; and I hear Frank Peretti’s Christian supernatural novels (This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness) in the closing section. Rereading this now is a vivid reminder of how much I liked all three of those things then. A few months after this, I started my five years at Bob Jones University, during which time I turned away from the ‘worldly’ aspects of this story and began to invest ever more heavily both intellectually and emotionally in the Gospel elements captured in the closing section. I have not cleaned up any of the many typos in this piece. (DL, Sept. 19, 2021)

Once upon a time, there was an old, fat, philandering lawyer named Daddy Mack. Now Daddy Mack had two loves in his life, beer and guns,  a deadly combination at best. One Christmas Eve, Daddy Mack had been celebrating in his customary fashion, when he decided that he wanted to shoot himself a nice buck for Christmas dinner. Therefore, Mack trundled off to his gun cabinet to select the perfect weapon for the occasion. After several moments of reflection, he settled on his pride and joy, a mini-gun that he had purchased from some Arab terrorists after seeing Terminator 2. He loaded up a backpack with sufficient ammo for about 15 seconds of automatic carnage, and strolled over to his wardrobe, where he selected a black leather jacket, and motorcycle boots. He then grabbed his Terminator 2 soundtrack, stuffed it into his discman, donned his shades and headed for the garage. He loaded all his gear onto his Harley, kicked the starter, and crashed through the garage door, singing “Bad to the Bone” at the top of his lungs.

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Gaming

Rome Mortal Combat

Note: I have been writing about video games in one form or another for most of my life. This piece was written for my junior high-school English class. The teacher of that class was excellent and had an extremely strong influence on my ability to write arguments clearly. I first learned the five paragraph essay (and the principles that form inculcates when well taught) from him. The three topics touched on in this piece–video games, ancient Rome, and morality–have continued to be important to me throughout my adult life. However as I have lost confidence in the Bible, finding the grounds from which to articulate a clear and authoritative moral vision in the absence of an authoritative holy book has been an ongoing challenge. (DL, Sept. 19, 2021)

2,000 years ago, two Roman galdiators are engaged in mortal combat.  With a quick feint, one of them darts forward and disembowels the other.  The watching thousands leap to their feet, cheering wildly.  Today, in the local arcade, two young men are engaged in “Mortal Kombat II”.  They are playing a video game that involves a fight to the death.  At the battle’s end, one of the characters reaches forward and rips the arms off the other.  Blood gushes, and bystanders erupt in laughter.  The striking similarities between the deadly forms of entertainment enjoyed by pagan Rome, and those forms of entertainment enjoyed today, illustrate how much the United States parallels the Roman Empire, and may be heading for the same end.

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