What's in a (Church's) Name?

As some of you may know, I attend a church in Huntington, WV called Living Hope Bible Church. Recently I was driving through a neighboring town in Ohio when I saw a new church called something like "Living Hope Christian Center." At first I was upset that they had used "Living Hope," but I realized that I was just being petty about our name. The folks who started this church had likely never even heard of us, as we're a pretty young, small church ourselves, so it is unlikely that they were copying our name. Plus, I suspect the two churches would not travel in the same theological circles. Regardless, what is important is that people are brought into the Kingdom of Christ through our respective ministries.

I did, however, continue to ponder the names of the various churches that have cropped up in my region over the last decade or so. New Life Victory Center. Spirit of Victory. Celebration Center. Living Hope Christian Center. End Time Assembly. What do all of these names have in common? None of them contain the word "church" (disclaimer: New Life Victory Center changed to New Life Church a while back). Why have so many Christians eschewed the word "church"?

One answer I might get from a large number of Christians is "Who cares?" Why does it matter exactly what we call our assemblies? Simply put, it matters because we are the Church. We are not "the Centers" or "the Assemblers." We are the Church. I understand the impulse to get away from traditional names that seem boring to people and to come up with something fresh and exciting, but ladies and gentlemen, we should be PROUD to be called the Church. This marks us as Christ's body! We are members of His Kingdom.

When we name our churches these exotic names we are telling the community that the "church" is the building where Christians gather. It is our assembly hall. This is another product of the overly individualized form of Christianity we practice today in America and in other parts of the West. I do not "go to" Living Hope Bible Church. I am a part of the body that is Living Hope Bible Church. When we call Churches "centers" and "assemblies" we play into a false concept of the nature of the Church and our relationship to it.

Terri Schiavo, December 3, 1963 - March 31, 2005

Terri Schiavo has died of forced starvation and dehydration. She was 41.

Crying Out for Certainty

This whole situation with Terri Schiavo continues to frustrate me. I am firmly allied with those who believe Terri should live (and that she certainly shouldn't be starved and dehydrated) but I just wish I could be talk to all the parties myself, you know? I so desperately want certainty, but it seems to me that there is at least a shadow of a doubt over Terri's condition. That being said, I don't think "a shadow of a doubt" justifies killing anyone in such a case.

Proponents of Terri's death say, "the courts have decided these things over and over" which sounds important until you realize that the "facts" of the case were decided in the original trial and were not open for dispute in any of the appeals. Michael Schiavo had a very good attorney who is well versed in "right to die" issues. The Schindlers had a young attorney working on out of sympathy. It was not until after the trial ended that (at some point) the Schindlers got a better attorney.

Some neurologists claim that Terri is in a PVS, but a leading neurologist, Dr. William Hammesfahr, disagrees. His report on Terri is published on Newsmax.com. I'm always skeptical of things I just read off of the internet, so I did a quick search on him and he seems to be a real doctor who works in the field of neurology. If you read the report he is convinced that Terri is not in a PVS and is responsive. However, Hammesfahr has been disciplined by the Florida Board of Medicine for false advertizing about his treatment of stroke victims. I read through a bit of the complaint and trial transcript myself, and some neurologists seem to think Hammesfahr's treatments work as advertized, and some don't. The claim that he is a Nobel Prize nominee is apparently false. This doesn't mean that what Dr. Hammesfahr says about Terri is false, but I really wish his record was a bit cleaner. It would be easy to portray him as a doctor who wants notoriety for his controversial method so he claims he can help Terri. For the record, the Schindlers asked him to examine Terri, he did not volunteer himself as I understand it.

People I trust who would know about this sort of thing and are pro-life have seen her CT and say that her brain is really "mush." Where does that leave me? Ugh. I'm confused. Any way you slice it, though, I don't advocate starving and dehydrating Terri.

New (Old) Music

Those of you who have read this blog for a while know that I occasionally post on the music I'm listening to. In the past I've advocated the musical stylings of Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, and Snow Patrol. I'm still a fan of all of the above, by the way, but the music I've been getting into lately is...well...something of a departure from that style. I'm going to add three to the list of "Lazy Logician Approved" artists:

1. Giovanni da Palestrina
2. Don Carlo Gesualdo
3. Hildegarde von Bingen

Yeah, that's right. Medieval composers (you'll have to forgive me if I use incorrect terminology about this kind of music as I'm new to the scene). I guess I'll blame my interest in this music on Hollywood because I've been enjoying this stuff in movies I've been watching (did [em]Constantine[/em] have some?). The intricate sounds these composers crafted using only the human voice put a number of orchestral pieces to shame. I've nearly been brought to tears several times.

These pieces do such a great job of communicating the transcendent nature of God (well, not so much Gesualdo). You can really get swept away by the beauty of the harmonies, or in Hildegarde's case, the stark unison. I think "haunting" is a good way to describe it.

So, for those of you desirous to expand your musical horizons, don't ignore these early classical composers. This is truly beautiful music.

Will George Get it Right?

If you haven't done so yet, go to StarWars.com and watch the latest trailer for Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. WOW. I realize I'm tipping everyone off to my fundamental geekhood (if it wasn't evident already), but that trailer has me ready to go stand in line. If this movie is as good as the trailers look, will Lucas be absolved of his "sins" in the eyes of Star Wars fans (note: I liked episodes I and II, so I don't have much of a beef with him)?

Stranded With Philosophers

Johnny-Dee has a good post over at Fides Quaerens Intellectum. It's a play off of the old "stranded on a desert island game. This time the question is what philosophers you would take with you. It wasn't original with John but, like him, I have no idea who did it first. Anyway, here's my list:

1. John Searle: I disagree with a lot of Searle's opinions, but he's got an interesting perspective, and after hearing him on Philosophy Talk I found out he is pretty funny (or at least he was on that show).
2. Alvin Plantinga: I've got to agree with John on this one. Here's another philosopher with a sense of humor, plus he could balance Searle's atheism.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein: I know, I know, he wouldn't be all that exciting as a party guest, but what can I say? I love the whole "flawed genius" thing. I find it fascinating (I guess that's why I love Good Will Hunting and A Beautiful Mind).
4. David Hume: By all accounts a philosopher who knew how to party. He could counteract Wittgenstein's introversion.
5. Jonathan Edwards: A personal hero of mine. An absolutely brilliant mind and a giant of the Christian faith. A lot of people have the idea he was just a hellfire and brimstone guy, but that wasn't true. He was a great thinker. He and Hume could have some interesting conversations.

So there's my list. I see potential for interesting interaction. I smell a TV series...

It Itches, I'm Tellin' Ya...

Certain Doubts has an interesting post on Keith Lehrer's Pain/Itch Example. The idea is that it's supposed to show we can be "mistaken even about the contents of our own minds." The example, taken from Jonathan Kvanvig's post at Certain Doubts, goes like this:

You go to the doctor complaining of an itch. He listens to your complaint, observes the location of the itch, writes down how the problem started, and the details about physical symptoms including duration and intensity of the experience. Then he tells you that he thinks he knows what the problem is. He tells you that it’s not really an itch, but a pain. People have confused these two in the past, but we now have a well-confirmed theory that distinguishes the two in a slightly different way than “the folk” do. The theory has led to two technologies. One is a machine for distinguishing the two underlying states, and the other is medicine for treating the two conditions. Your doctor tells you that one of the medicines will solve the problem if you’re experiencing a pain, but not the itch; and the other medicine will have the alternative results. You insist that you’re experiencing an itch, but he uses the machine and shows you the results: you’re in pain, it says. If you still insist, he’ll give you the itch medicine. You do, and he does; you return two weeks later, still suffering, and ask for the pain medicine. You take it and get well. So you say, “I guess I was wrong. It was a pain, not an itch, after all!”

Like several respondents I was left unimpressed (see Jonah Shupbach's good criticism here. Why should I think that this machine the doctor (or whomever) built is in a better position to judge my internal states than I am? Even if the machine can tell the difference between the two sensations why does that mean that I am in pain?

Beyond that, it seems to me that Lehrer has made some unwarranted assumptions in formulating this example. In situations like this I prefer to tread lightly because this example was formulated by an intelligent man; so I offer the caveat that I might be missing something. At any rate, Lehrer designed the example to show how we might be mistaken about the contents of our own minds. He first needs to prove, I think that such a thing is possible in such a clear case when our mind is not clouded in some way (perhaps he does in some other article which I have not read, but I tend to doubt it). He assumes it is, and I think this is not warranted. If the example is intended as proof that it is possible then it is circular because it assumes the possibility at the outset of the example (this is why I doubt it was meant as such a proof).

I can build a similar example on why 2+2 acutally equals 5 rather than 4, but I wouldn't expect people to believe that either. Imagine you are in a math class and your professor put a giant red 'X' next to your answer of '4' to the problem '2+2=?'. You challenge her on this and she says, "Actually it is 5. Humans only think it's 4 because of a trick of the brain. We ran it through a sophisticated Math program invented by researches from MIT and the answer came out to be '5'. We repeated the calculations numerous times and have come to the conclusion that the way the 'folk' add two and two is slightly off." So off you go to check on this math program. You purchase it and have some software experts analyze it and they assure you it's perfect. So you conclude that 2+2 does equal '5'.

Of course, just because I build an example of how 2+2 could equal five doesn't mean that it's possible that it could happen. I would have to prove its possibility before I even tried to move on to how it could be done. Similarly, for Lehrer's example to work you would have to assume the possibility of our being wrong about our mental states from the outset. Any comments?

Brain Freeze

I've been having a hard time coming up with good blog fodder lately. I think one reason is that I want everything to be too good. I mean, a blog is an on-line journal, right? Who in the world says it's supposed to be full of lucid, fully-formed thoughts? I think I read Maverick Philosopher too much. He always seems to have something insightful to say, but then again, he's been studying philosophy and other things for a lot longer than I have.

I do want to post more on philosophy as well. I just have to come up with some worthwhile things to think and talk about. Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to keep reading and talk about that.

Alright, I'm done whining now.

The Bayes Haze Revisited

So I've read some internet articles and picked up a book to help me with probability. It turns out that Bayes Theorem isn't that hard after all (hooray!!). First I just needed to get over the whole "distaste for math" thing I had. It's not that I'm bad at math, it's just not my best subject so I tend to turn up my nose at the sight of numbers. The other problem is just learning what all the letters and symbols stand for. Voila! Probabilty "ain't that big a deal." I'm not ready to rumble with the experts by any stretch, but it seems the journey will be a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

A Husband's Responsibility

Most people are probably tired of hearing about how our culture misconstrues love, but I think it's the case. Here you have the whole "falling in/falling out" model propagated by Hollywood and in the rain-forest devouring phenomenon known as the romance novel. We are told that an inability to choose who we love is a brute fact for all humanity. "The heart wants what it wants," as Woody Allen said.

Our absorption of this idea has made it a strange and seemingly futile thing to "work on" a relationship. Generally whenever I hear a couple say they need to work on their relationship I hear an accompanying death knell. Even many couples who stay together do so because they have that rare ability to sustain the feelings that most people use up in the early stages.

If it is the case that "the heart wants what it wants" and "working on a relationship" is futile, then what do we say to people like Michael Schiavo? This is a man who has abandoned his wife (Terri; see below for more on her) when she needs him the most. But he is no longer in love with Terri, is he? No, he is not, otherwise he would not have fathered children with another woman, with whom he still lives. If this is the nature of love, Michael should get a free pass.

The fact of the matter is, however, Michael should not get a free pass. Most people who are honest with themselves find Michael's course of action repugnant. This calls into question the nature of love. I think the very marriage vows many of us take are a better picture of the nature of love. We are to care for each other. We are not free to do whatever we wish when the other is in a coma or severely brain damaged. We have pledged ourselves to this other person and have no right to sever that bond (unless it is mutually agreed upon). The heart is fickle. Honor is not. Husbands, love your wives. Don't just tell them of the warm feelings you have. Honor them by taking care of them in their hour of need. Do not betray your vows.

What Can a Vegetable Do?

Did you know that vegetables can smile? Did you know that they can recognize their mothers' voice? How about this: Did you know they can follow a balloon across the room with their eyes? And laugh or cry? According to the state of Florida a vegetable can do any one of these things because they maintain that Terry Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state. Here are Terri's father's words:

By now you have probably heard about a young woman who is threatened with starvation in Florida.

That young woman is my daughter, Terri. In 1990, through circumstances which are shrouded in mystery (and may involve a criminal act by Terri's estranged husband), my daughter was left severely brain-damaged.


But before I go any further, I must put an end to the lies and misinformation that are circulating around the country through the media concerning my daughter's condition.

Contrary to anything you may have heard, Terri is NOT brain dead; Terri is NOT in a coma; she is NOT in a "persistent vegetative state;" nor is she on ANY life-support system.

Terri laughs, Terri cries, she moves, and she makes child-like attempts at speech with her mother and me. Sometimes she will say "Mom" or "Dad" or "yeah" when we ask her a question. When I kiss her hello or goodbye, she looks at me and "puckers up" her lips.

This may not seem like much to you, but it means everything to Terri's mother and me. It tells us she is still here, she still knows us, and with therapy and time she can have some level of recovery.

I know that there are some hard hearted people who believe that due to my daughters condition, she is better off dead. Words cannot describe the pain and anger such sentiments cause us. This is our daughter, our little girl, and even in her disabled condition, she still has the right to life and the right to be loved and cared for by her family.

Why, you may ask, is Terry in danger of death by starvation?

It is a long and outrageous story, but I'll give it to you as briefly as I can.

After the "incident" that left Terry in this condition, her husband Michael Schiavo sued various members of the medical community for money, saying that they did not treat or diagnose her properly at an early stage, and that he needed this money to provide for Terri's therapy and rehabilitation and care.

After lengthy court battles, he finally won upwards of $1.7 million under the guise of caring for our daughter, and then to our horror, he immediately began spending the money on himself and his Playboy lifestyle.

Terri's estranged husband Michael Schiavo has been living with another woman for years, and has two children by her. He is determined to see Terri dead. Why? We believe it's because he gets to keep whatever money is left... and he may have even darker motives than that.

To add insult to all of this injury toward my daughter, Michael Schiavo is still her "legal husband" and therefore is her "guardian." And since they are not legally divorced, he controls whatever health care she will and will not get. We are not even allowed to know if she is getting aspirin.

In 1993 my family initiated litigation against Michael Schiavo solely for the purpose of acquiring medical, physical and neurological assistance for our daughter Terri. The litigation escalated in 1998 when Michael Schiavo petitioned the court to stop Terri from receiving food and water, thereby starving her to death.

In filing this legal action, he retained the services of a high profile euthanasia attorney and the financial backing of powerful euthanasia organizations. He also used Terri's medical rehabilitation money to underwrite much of the legal expenses associated with his effort to starve our daughter to death.

We know that he has spent nearly $500,000 of Terri's money in attorney's fees for just one attorney trying to obtain a court order to have Terri starved to death. The very money that was supposed to be used for Terri's rehabilitation is being used to have her killed.

We very quickly discovered it was impossible for us to compete with the abundance of financial and legal resources the pro-death organizations were providing Micheal Schiavo in their effort to kill Terri. They are pouring time and effort into her starvation because they want to use this case to further the agenda of legalized euthanasia.

Hat tip to Daily Inklings

The Fight to Save Terri

You may notice that I've put the "Blogs for Terri" blogroll in my sidebar. For those who don't know, Terri Schiavo is a woman who suffered some severe brain damage but is not in a persistent vegetative state. Her husband Michael won a malpractice suit and the money was supposed to be used to get Terri the best care possible. He did no do this and now that this financial well is going dry he has been fighting to get her feeding tube removed so she will starve to death. Nevermind the fact that doctors have said that with physical therapy she wouldn't even need to use the feeding tube anymore.

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Michael's efforts to kill his wife should be allowed. The hope is that Blogs for Terri can somehow contribute to the fight for her survival. Human life is precious. Count me in.

Get further information on Blogs for Terri here.

Superman's Muscles

A lot of people think of Superman as the ultimate superhero. He does, after all, seem to have it everything. You know, invulnerability, flight, heat vision, super super strength, the works. Accordingly, the guys who have played him in the movies have been these big, muscle-bound types. When you think about it, though, if Superman was real he'd probably be really skinny. I mean, here you have this guy who can lift a freight train one-handed, so it would probably be pretty hard to find a set of weights that could offer enough resistance to build up his muscles. Of course, then he'd look a lot less impressive in his tights.

So instead of someone like Brandon Routh or that Smallville kid in the next Superman movie, picture this: The camera moves rapidly across an empty field and up into the air, then beyond the atmosphere and into space where a figure in blue tights and a red cape flies into view. It's SUPERMAN! Starring: Adrien Brody as the Man of Steel!

Yeah. That's how it should be.

I "Won" an Award!!!!

Bible Archive has given me the much coveted (I'm sure) "Salon du Refuse Arbitrary Choice Award!"



*Sniff* I'd like to thank all the people who made this award possible. Me mostly, but also Rey for randomly selecting me. And Johnny Dee for inspiring me to start my blog. All my hard work is starting to pay off...

See the rest of the winners here.

The Bayes Haze

My goal, after spending entirely too long as an undergrad, is to go to a Masters program in philosophy. Since I have two years left before I can go I decided to educate myself in philosophy (it is not my undergrad major). One thing that is difficult for me to get a handle on is Bayes Theorem. I just have to make my mind start thinking in that way. I've never read much on it, but I have started with the entry from the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It's hard going for a guy who doesn't have any training in that sort of thing, but I will do it. My goal right now, though, is to get beyond reading that stuff like a kindergartener reads. Then, who knows? Maybe I'll master it someday.

Did anyone else have trouble with it when they first encountered it or is it just me?

They are Evil

I have been silent on the Iraqi elections thus far, mainly because there are a lot of people out there better qualified to talk about it than me. However, when I read Charles Krauthammer's column this morning I could not keep from commenting on one thing. A lot of people continue to defend the terrorists in Iraq as "insurgents" or whatever name is the poplular one this week. To those of you who continue to doubt the evil of these terrorists I present you with this fact:

As if to make a point even more definitively, it was not the suicide bombers but the voters they killed at the polls who were buried as martyrs. The remains of one suicide bomber were spat upon. Another suicide bomber, reported Iraq's interior minister, was a child with Down syndrome. There are no words for the depths of such depravity, sending an innocent to murder innocents, dressing this poor child in explosives and then leading him to his slaughter

This is an act of true evil. If you can't recognize that for what it is, then you are beyond hope.

God, Logic, and Dooeyweerd

I've been meaning to blog on an interesting perspective on the nature of God I came across recently. Some of you may have heard of this before, so I will ask you to bear with me. In an e-mail exchange I discussed the Dooeyweerdian position on the nature of God with a fellow Christian. I will give a short explanation of what the Dooeyweerdian position is, but here are two links that will likely do it better:

Can God Do the Illogical? Part 1
Can God Do the Illogical? Part 2

The idea is that, contrary to what most Christians think, things like the laws of logic (or love, faithfulness, etc.) are not grounded in God's nature. Rather they are created by God and He abides by them in order to accomodate Himself to us. I think this concept of God is wrong.

Why do I reject Dooeyweerd's concept of God? Because, it seems to me, it either self-destructs or resorts to "epicycles" in order to survive. In my first wrangle with a Dooeyweerdian I suggested that if God created logic then He could take us all right up to judgment day and then say, "OK, Christians, you guys are going to Hell." When confronted with Biblical statements about His promises to Christians He might say, "I'm not bound by logic. When I made those statements I meant the opposite."

The response from the Dooeyweerdian is that God will not violate the word He has given us. In accomodating Himself to us He decided that He would follow a certain set of rules. But what if God has actually chosen deception as His rule for our universe? Perhaps God is being as deceptive as possible with us. Maybe the Bible is an elaborate lie and when we are all judged God sends all relatively honest people to Hell.

Someone might object, "that would violate God's love!" In this hypothetical reality God's love would also be part of the deception (I must admit I am a bit confused by Dooeyweerdians because sometimes it seems as though they think God could choose things like deception as virtues and sometimes it doesn't. If I'm being unfair I trust someone will come along and correct me). If the Dooeyweerdian says God won't choose deception because He desires to accomodate Himself to us, he will have to say that this desire is a part of God's nature outside of creation, which should be unacceptable to him if God indeed has none of these properties inherently. The reason for this is that this desire would have to precede creation to have any impact on God's choice. If it procedes creation where could it come from but the nature of God? In this way the Dooeyweerdian position seems to self-destruct.

I have also read that Dooeyweerdians do allow for God's created attributes to be based in some way on His nature, but that His nature is unknowable so we can't tell. Here I get the feeling we're going through epicycles. This seems like a move to save the phenomenon when it is simpler and at least as harmonious with Scripture to hold the more common position. So I reject the Dooeyweerdian position on the grounds that it either self-destructs or that it must resort to epicycles to save itself.

A Fantastic New Blog

I'm really impressed with the lineup they've gathered over at The Conservative Philosopher. That's going to become an every day visit for me! Check it out!

A Good Story Recommendation

Brandon at Siris is posting the text of "The Lotus," which is a short story of his. I was take with it immediately, so I thought I'd link the first installment. I may link the other two whenever he posts them. I highly recommend it.

A Haiku Mourning the Steelers AFC Championship Loss

My Steelers have lost
Cruel gambler's fallacy!
I thought they were due