Slavery in pagan times versus Christian times

From Bulfinch's Age of Fables:

"In memory of his [Saturn's] beneficent dominion, the feast of Saturnalia was held every year in the winter season. Then all public business was suspended, declaration of war and criminals executions were postponed, friends made presents to one another, and the slaves were indulged with great liberties. A feast was given them at which they sat at table, while their masters served them, to show the natural equality of men, and that all things belonged equally to all, in the reign of Saturn."


While I can't research further or write about it tonight, I read this and wanted to note that slavery appears to have been worse in America than in pagan Europe, as far as the dignity of the slave is concerned. There are probably various reasons for this, and there were obviously differences in harshness of practice both throughout Europe and America, depending on local custom, the individual slaveowner, etc. Nonetheless, I know of no such ritual in America where slaves were put ahead of their masters.

And slavery was in fact on the decline in Christian Europe from the fall of Rome until at least the end of the Middle Ages. Why did at least the first 1000 years of Christianity see a drastic reduction in slavery in Europe, only to see its revival later on? I'm sure empire had to do with it. But I suspect many undercurrents of thought helped contribute to desiring empire and exploration, so that's too simple an explanation.

And I don't think anyone back then had a concept of race, so racial inferiority couldn't have been a justification for changing opinions on the universal equality of men that was held even by the pagans and would have found a fuller defense in the Christian tradition.

Negative Obamaology

Anyone who honestly considers the available information on Obama and his year and a half in office must concede that Obama isn't a Muslim, a terrorist, "a Arab", a Communist or The Anti-Christ. Eliminating these definitions as applicable to our president still leaves one with much defining to do. I had initially wanted to give him some proper positive definitions, but I think some thoughtful rambling will bear more fruit.

Now, I must note that I find Obama more respectable than most Democrats in office right now. That might be due to my own naiveté. I imagine time will tell. And I don't hope that Obama fails for the sake of the Republicans gaining office; I hope that Obama will succeed, for America's sake, though my skepticism ranges from moderate to severe, depending on the issue. So I don't have it in for the man, as he has "the hardest job in the world."

Actually, that's not quite true. He has the job with the most responsibility in the world, or at least his responsibility has the most coverage of any job in the world. And I'm sure he works damn hard at his job. But there are jobs that must be at least equally difficult. And defining what makes a job difficult is difficult indeed, as one could have a weak body, or a weak mind, or a weak soul, and be placed in a job that others might not find difficult but that would be nearly impossible for certain individuals. I imagine Christopher Hitchens being forced to be a Pentecostal minister, for instance.

So despite the difficulties of the office of POTUS, which are indeed demanding in many ways, Obama is fit for his office, as he is a fine speaker, young and in good health and highly educated. Though his job can truly be said to be difficult, there are probably many jobs in D.C. as stressful, either because of the level of responsibility, the demands of the job relative to the worker, the inner life of the worker, et cetera.

But going back to the original point, Obama has fallen into being "anti-scientific", that is, he's making decisions that aren't based on what is clear in the light of reason: He is not putting his faith and reason in science, which is definitely sinful. Obama made a big point about how he and his administration would not be swayed by ideologies (you'd think someone with his intellectual background and capacity would know better) when things like the oil spill arose, because good science is the best solution for most problems, especially a problem like this.

Unfortunately, the oil spill, a scenario where Scientism would be totally in his zone, has taken a back seat to Big Oil Money and Bureaucracy, who did sports management and business in undergrad, respectively, and then got MBAs. The one time we could have used Scientism, that cold-hearted bastard who at least believes in something outside himself (even if it isn't something entirely good, or beautiful, or true), we now must rely on the culpable corporation's scientists, and the government officials with whom they fornicate frequently, to give us "data." (I put data in quotes because the data is inaccurate data, because it's not based on empiricism but in industrial capitalism.) Anyway, when there are independent scientists estimating that the oil spill is probably spewing out 17 times more oil than official estimates, the phrase "total debacle" feels more and more appropriate.

Obama isn't stupid, so I imagine he's aware of at least the general spirit and truth of my criticisms, or at least why one might have such criticisms. The question is, why isn't he doing anything? Does he disagree with my criticisms, or does he agree and is entirely impotent, despite him holding the highest political office in the world? I imagine it's some of both. I'd like to think and write more about that, but not tonight.

I can't compare Katrina to Deepwater Horizon, as they are entirely different disasters. Over a thousand are supposed to have died from Katrina, whereas 11 died in this incident. Both events caused massive physical destruction, but Katrina's destruction was terrible primarily in that it destroyed human life and society, whereas the oil spill is deadly to all life and will affect humans in ways more subtle, at least initially. Calling the oil spill "Obama's Katrina" was too easy and premature an analogy to make initially, but the more information that comes out about the BP oil spill, the more the label rings true.

How much should Obama be blamed for this event? Well, he is culpable in many ways. But most likely anyone electable would do roughly what he did. I fear that only the unelectable would be able or willing to do the right thing in an event like this. So Obama deserves his portion of the blame, but we shouldn't be absolutely surprised or scandalized, either. We also shouldn't ignore the facts, or, more likely, not know the facts due to willful ignorance. What we should do is something of which I'm not exactly sure, though I have some intuitions.

I hate the DOD bloggers roundtable

Got 50 minutes of overtime today finishing up an 8-minute Defense Department bloggers roundtable. A typical roundtable consists of a military official being interviewed by a moderator, who then opens up the phone lines to military-focused bloggers. Though I've gotten pretty good at Iraqi geography, names, et cetera, this one was difficult. I also mispelled Shi'a (as S'hia) throughout my portion and luckily caught it before I sent out the whole thing. Today was the latest I've ever stayed because of my own work.

I had vegan for dinner tonight with my sister. My breakfast was an egg and cheese sandwich and my lunch was a small coffee. The vegan food was shaped and textured to be like meat and was actually satisfying. To stay consistent with dinner, I'm drinking a vegan bock as I blog.

I'm halfway through a lecture I downloaded by an Orthodox monk saying Christ is the fulfillment of the Tao. It's pretty interesting, as it's not promoting religious Taoism or Buddhism or pluralism but saying that Lao Tzu's writing was very much consistent and a foreshadowing of Christian revelation, much in the same way that many of the Greeks appear to have foreshadowed many aspects of Christianity. He even claims that much of Greek and Chinese thought paralleled much of the time in history, even though the thinkers would not have had contact with one another. Especially interesting was the fact that the idea of "nothingness" in Eastern thought doesn't actually mean "nothingness" in the sense it's often translated into Western ideas by top philosophers of religion like Ray Comfort.

During the Q&A he said that he considered Thomas Merton a tragic figure who had lost his faith. I had thought Merton had said right before he died that his experiences in the East had not caused him to reject any part of his Catholic faith and actually strengthened it, and that he was content, but perhaps the speaker knows a lot more about this than I. For the sake of my overflowing shelves, it would be helpful to find out Merton wasn't worth reading, but I'm not going to make any quick judgments yet, and I'd prefer thinking he was having fellowship with God.

If anyone is interesting in perusing the lecture, the link is here.

That's all I've got for right now. I'll try to do something lighter tomorrow eve.

New beginnings? Too cliche. You know what I think about those...

For no particular reason except that I havent been writing and need to write (transcribing is not writing), I am returning to the blogosphere. Before anyone criticizes my lack of apostrophes, I must tell you that hitting the apostrophe key on my keyboard activates the search function, which interrupts my writing and stifles my creative nectars. Most likely Ill just do my blogging with Chrome from now on.

What should one expect from this blog? Look forward to ill-informed pontifications on all sorts of philisophical and theological matters, food and drink reviews, comments on the opinion makers Ive heard at work, thoughts on visual and acoustic media Ive sensed of late, perhaps a picture of an Obama motorcade, an amusing ad or license plate, et cetera. Who knows?

Tonight wont be a big writing night, but rest assured that I will be "intentional" about my blogging, i.e., I will do my best to make note of and remember the astute observations that occur constantly throughout my day, in order that I may enlighten the reader and spur on humanity's inevitable progress toward world peace, universal conciousness/health care (almost the same thing), the rapture, et cetera.

I leave you with an image of the White House in spring, taken during my lunch break. (The picture was supposed to be at the bottom of the screen, but Im not going to fix it.)

Excerpts from The Dispossessed

Page 86
"... No heat was furnished when the outside temperature went above 55 degrees Fahrenheit. It was not that Abbenay was short of power, not with her wind heating; but the principle of organic economy was too essential to the functioning of society not to affect ethics and aesthetics profoundly. "Excess is excrement," Odo wrote in the Analogy. "Excrement retained in the body is a poison."

Page 103
"So they had bargained, he and Sabul, bargained like profiteers. It had not been a battle, but a sale. You give me this and I'll give you that. Refuse me and I'll refuse you. Sold? Sold! Shevek's career, like the existence of his society, depended on the continuance of a fundamental, unadmitted profit contract. Not a relationship of mutual aid and solidarity, but an exploitative relationship; not organic, but mechanical. Can true function arise from basic dysfunction?"

Page 115
"The whole experience had been so bewildering to him that he put it out of mind as soon as possible, but he had dreams about it for months afterwards, nightmares. Saemtenevia Prospect was two miles long, and it was a solid mass of people, traffic, and things: things to buy, things for sale ... everything either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use; acres of luxuries, acres of excrement.

"And the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workshops, the factories, where were the farmers, the craftsmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands of the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possession."

Is "Someone" not an Evangelical?

Contained below is a portion from Dr. Richard Land's blog entry 'Why I'm not signing the 'Evangelical Manifesto'. The text below can be read in its entirety here. (Any bolded or italicized text is my own emphasis).

Dr. Land:

"What are my problems with the statement? Let us begin with a basic, foundational theological question. The Manifesto affirms that “Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth.” That is surely true, but it is also hopefully true of all the many followers of Jesus who would never call themselves, or desire to be called, Evangelicals.

The Manifesto then enunciates several beliefs that Evangelicals “have prized above all” and that they “consider to be at the heart of the message of Jesus and therefore foundational for us.” The Manifesto then asserts that “the only ground for our acceptance by God is what Jesus Christ did on the cross and what he is now doing through his risen life, whereby he exposed and reversed the course of human sin and violence, bore the penalty for our sins, credited us with his righteousness, redeemed us from the power of evil, reconciled us to God, and empowers us with his life ‘from above.’”

When I read that statement I say, “Amen.” Then I ask myself, “Why ‘foundational for us’ instead of ending with ‘foundational’? And why ‘our acceptance’ rather than ‘the only ground for acceptance by God’?”

Could this be an attempt to qualify the most basic of all evangelical foundational beliefs, Jesus’ assertion that “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6)? I could not help but notice that when the Manifesto quoted this verse several paragraphs earlier in the document, the drafters omitted the last half of the verse: “no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Why?

Is this just verbal imprecision, or is it something more? I know the majority of the drafters and the original signees, and I know that they are “exclusivists” — people who believe that for all men everywhere there is only salvation in personal faith in Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16). However, I know at least one original signee to be a non-exclusivist. The question must be asked, and asked clearly and directly — does An Evangelical Manifesto believe that salvation for all men everywhere is through personal faith in Jesus and only Jesus?

Further, can someone believe something other than “exclusivism” concerning salvation and still be an evangelical? This evangelical’s answer to that question is, and always will be, “No!”"

-----------------

I must first note two things: First, that I respect and understand where this writer is coming from; and also that I respect that Dr. Land chose not to actually name the person he considered a Non-Exclusivist.

I'm assuming that the "original signees" Dr. Land is referring to is, or includes, the Steering Committee, which is comprised of Timothy George, Os Guinness, John Huffman, Rich Mouw, Jesse Miranda, David Neff, Richard Ohman, Larry Ross and Dallas Willard. Given Dr. Land's definition of a Non-Exclusivist, I would say at least one person on this list fits that definition (though I must mention I only know the general beliefs of two of the men on the Steering Committee).

Anyone who reads this and knows me is probably also aware of who is probably being called a Non-Exclusivist. So my questions are:

1. Is there a clear definition of what an Evangelical is?

A lot of Reformed and Mainline Protestants might not consider themselves Evangelicals, while there are actually some Catholics who call themselves by that name. I would generally define the term Evangelical as referring to people who would identify with the basic tenets of "The Fundamentals", and who identify with the basic tenets of a modern conservative Protestant domination, such as the need for personal conversion, the Bible as the highest authority, etc.

2. (a.) If an Evangelical cannot be a Non-Exclusivist, can any Christian be a Non-Exclusivist (as defined by Dr. Land),

(b.) or have such persons passed from difference of opinion into heresy?

I don't know what the history of interpretations has been on this matter, but I guess there has probably been debate on it previous to the last couple weeks.

3. If I'm right about who that "Someone" is, should Someone be referred to as an Evangelical?

My answers would be: 1, Kinda; 2(a.), Yes; 2(b.), No; 3, Yes, if they are willing to still be called by that title.

Anyone else have an opinion?

Concerning the Internet, Researching Nazi Occultism, and the Online edition of the Liberty Champion

Two semesters ago I was given a history assignment, with the goal of researching a historical event/period using only the internet. The topic my group chose was "WWII" (a very specific and narrow topic). Every group member got to choose their own subcategory. I chose Nazi Occultism.

I'm not sure what the lesson of that online-only assignment was, but it did teach me that there is a lot of crap on the Internet. The number of 10+ year old geocity, earthlink, and homestead sites concerning Nazi Occultism, Historical-Revisionism, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Religionism, Anti-Evolutionism, and a number of other poorly-cited subjects -- many of them defined in the negative -- was astounding.

And the text was always finely paired with an appropriate aesthetic, with many of the early-day web publishers employing such techniques as colored backgrounds, multi-colored text, multiple fonts on the same page, non-working hyperlinks, and lots of animated gifs, often in columns or rows.

While I think our project ended up being a poor excuse for a history presentation, I think it did achieve her other goal: teaching students that if you only have one resource for real research, it should not be the Internet.

On a similar note, let me quickly address some issues I recently found on the Online edition of the Liberty Champion.

Whoever is the site's webmaster is poorly qualified. They do not know how to integrate their stories online without random HTML code showing up. The stories that don't have HTML paragraph breaks have no paragraph breaks. And don't forget the spelling errors; I found the following ones by searching under headlines alone: (Ashville is Asheville; Fadford is Radford; elecrtic is electric, etc).

For such errors a website is the most forgiving format, as it can be edited at any time -- Even The Washington Post sometimes has errors, but they are always corrected within an hour or so. If the text online is the exact same as the print copy's, most of the Liberty Champion staff need to reexamine their career goals.