Categorical Logic and “labeling"

You’ll often hear in popular media/culture that “labels” are bad because they oversimplify and stereotype groups of people according to loosely established or fictional correlations. This form of labeling is often a negative thing. But really the problem, I think, has been misconstrued. The problem is not that people are being categorized but the way they are being categorized. I think intuitively people recognize this, because we still objectively classify people according to their various attributes and characteristics that are obviously common such as; “tall people” “french speaking people” or “people who can play a musical instrument”. These sorts of “labels” are unobjectionable and are so because they are obvious. This sort of categorization is inevitable as soon as we concede that people in fact have various properties and characteristics, regardless of how unique they might be. However, it there does seem to be much truth to the claim that labeling can be harmful. The tool of categorization is only as effective as the skill of the user. Peoples emotions and biases get in the way and the inevitable result is negative stereotypes and caricatures of what people are actually like. I’m really not sure if this is a problem that can be solved, or if it is even worth solving. Nevertheless, we can be sure that the solution to the problem is to cease labeling people altogether. I can only conclude that what has been termed “labeling” as well as the origin of the term itself are a result of intellectual laziness and group thinking. The real problem is peoples tendency to make hasty generalizations of the people around them.

Aside from this, I’ve also noticed a peculiar pattern among many of my peers to reject religious and philosophical labels/categories. So for instance, I’ve been told on more than a few occasions that my attempts to understand other peoples viewpoints by figuring out where they “fit” on the landscape of ideas and concepts is narrow minded and simplistic. Surprisingly, I’ve heard this equally from both Christians and non-Christians. Unfortunately, it seems people are making a decisive error in their reasoning. They seem to be equivocating categories with ideas, supposing that there is an infinite number of categories. The thing about categories, however, is that they are always reducible. So for instance in number sets you can have an infinite number of sets, say sets of random numbers in a consecutive series, but all of these sets will both be in the category of “consecutive numbers” and broader sets such as natural or real numbers. This is because all sets have something in common, no matter how unique, that being they are sets or categories! In fact the basis for this axiom is that ideas and concepts can have definitions to begin with. To give something a definition is to give it a semantic range of meaning. In other words to “fit” it on the landscape of ideas. Thus, perhaps without knowing it, people who claim you cannot put a label on their ideas are really denying that their ideas can be defined, which makes it difficult to see how such ideas could have any meaning to begin with.

I don’t think that this means people who accept this view somehow reject the objectivity of truth or any of that nonsense. Rather, these people could be labelled as skeptics (oh the irony) because they are primarily skeptical that their ideas can be understood by those around them or that others can truly grasp their perspective, but they don’t deny that people have objective ideas or perspectives. Even still, I think this position is still far too strong to be adequately justified, for if we cannot understand where another person is coming from, how on earth do we communicate at all? Its a miracle you can even understand what I am writing at all if this is true! As such I think we must reject this popular form of perennial skepticism despite any comfort or security it might bring to us.

core theology, the clarity of scripture and convoluted theological controversies

A seeming contradiction among theologians, particularly evangelical theologians is their claim that scripture can be understood by the average reader with little to no academic training in exegesis, philosophy, theology etc and their practice of entering innumerable debates about seemingly endless doctrinal points, disputes and concepts. How can this be so? If scripture is so clear, why is their disagreement or uncertainty at all about what it teaches and what Christians should believe? I can give no complete answer here, but only a broad arrow that points in the right direction.


It seems to me that all the (Protestant) Christian means by "the clarity of scripture" is that the basic message of God's redemption through Christ can be clearly seen by reading scripture. That is to say that a sort of mere Christianity can be established by reading scripture without any extensive knowledge of the subject matter. We can illustrate this with a child's observation and interaction with a television. The child understands the broad purpose and basic proper use of a television without any extensive knowledge of how it works. The child knows a tv when he sees one and probably has a vague idea about what powers it. If you ask an electrical engineer, however, what a tv is and how it works, you'll probably be engaged in a lengthy discussion. Likewise the child understands how to change channels and find the shows and programs he wants to watch or even how to play videogames. The engineer, however, may have more understanding about how to get more out of the tv such as how to hook up new systems like a computer or dvr to it. He will also likely know how to fix the tv when it is broken and needs repairs.


In the same way a Christian who has no interest in or access to scholarly resources on the Biblical text understand what the Bible is and how to use it. As such in depth theological study is not necessary for being an orthodox Christian. On the other hand, the more knowledgeable a Christian is in matters of Biblical interpretation and study, the more use and better grasp of the Biblical text she will have. This allows for a deeper understanding of Christian doctrine and a bigger tool chest for reasoning through problematic passages. By extension this allows the studious Christian to aid other Christians who are despairing over an apparent contradiction in the text.


Still, churches see personal Bible study as centered around personal application and ethical teachings. The dirty work of exegesis and contextual studies is forced to the sidelines. Theology is increasingly seen as unnecessary. This may be true if one is speaking of a bare minimum requirement for the Christian life. A Christian can survive without much in depth study, but that Christian cannot thrive on it. Christ did not command the Church to do the bare minimum when it comes to anything else in our lives, whether it means giving to the poor, evangelism or worship. So then why do Christians feel justifiably complicit in their refusal to use the entirety of their cognitive resources for the glory of God?

An overview of Hebrew Block Logic

Work on block logic has largely been developed by Marvin Wilson in his book “Our Father Abraham”. Block logic is contrasted with “Greek” step logic. The latter is the sort of logic we are all used to where we draw one idea from another in logical succession. Wilson doesn’t contrast Hebrew with Greek logic because Hebrew’s never used Greek step logic (its clear from the Old Testament they did). Rather, block logic appears to have only been used by Hebrews and perhaps other Middle Eastern cultures. Block logic could also be termed “dualistic thought” because it is all about pulling out and placing next to each other completely opposite and opposing ideas. Pharaoh’s heart being hardened both by himself and by God is a classic example (see Exodus 7-8). The phrase, “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.” in Malachi 1:3 also expresses this sort of thinking. These statements point to tensions the Hebrew author is pointing to. It is a way of putting two ideas together without comparing them or drawing any further proposition from them that would solve the tension. To the Hebrew this would be seen as unnecessary.

The theme of Job points towards why this is; “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding (38:4 ESV).” A theme that is common throughout scripture from the story of Job to Solomon’s writings in Ecclesiastes to Paul’s writing in Romans is that there are mysteries of God that man either has no right to demand from God or has simply no way of knowing. Either way, the Hebrews saw no need to explore these ideas further. They were non-essentials because they had clearly and undeniably experienced the truth of God’s power and providence. In a way then ancient Hebrews were existentialists for they, like many Mediterranean culture’s saw experience of life as more important than creating a system of abstract thought. Indeed, all theological ideas of the Hebrews were seen in every aspect of their lives.

 Similar dualistic thinking can be seen in Luke 14:26:27 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (NIV).” Here we see Jesus drawing tension between two ideas; following Him and loving one’s father and mother. What is interesting here is that Jesus never quite explains why it is that there is a tension between these two ideas but only explains the wisdom of counting the cost of following Christ before doing so. So not only is there a dualistic tension within the teaching of Jesus but there is also this diametric tension in the methods of Christ’s teachings. At one point he wishes to reveal important truths to His audience but at another He seems dead set on confounding and challenging His audience with confusing ideas seemingly left for them to think out for themselves. The statement Jesus makes at the end of His teaching makes this fairly clear, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

A fair conclusion to take from the above example is that Hebrew dualistic thought was not only used to draw lines in the sand of what is necessary to think out and what is not but also as an arrow urging people to continue forward, thinking through difficult ethical and existential issues. Therefore, I disagree with Wilson’s conclusion that we should see Hebrew block logic in the Bible as cautions against systematizing theology and trying to work out mysteries of God. I don’t think the Hebrew authors of the Old Testament saw such activities as dangerous unless they were done out of selfish condemnation and questioning of God justice and sovereignty as in the case of Job. Regularly, they just didn’t seem to care to solve seeming contradictions like God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom.

http://books.google.com/books?id=RPyAG2cduiAC&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=Wilson+on+Hebrew+block+logic&source=bl&ots=YyDXxRfykI&sig=8ZTUoz7DjfQ-QjnTUeeCsxOYXEE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1a_YUpSQH4zxoATbhoEY&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Wilson%20on%20Hebrew%20block%20logic&f=false 

Compatibilism and Reformed Thought

The Reformed position has traditionally been that man is totally depraved not so that he isn’t free but that he never desires to do anything good. Calvinist’s see freedom then as what the ability of man to do what he desires. This sees freedom as only nullified in a causal chain if one is prevented from doing what one desires.

Calvinists and Reformed thinkers will often use the following thought experiment to defend their version of compatibilism;

Suppose that the substance peanut butter is the worst tasting edible food in existence. Now suppose that a person sat down in a room and given a choice between eating peanut butter or eating the most delicious steak ever made. Would he or she choose the peanut butter or the steak? It seems safe to assume such a person would choose the steak over the peanut butter. Furthermore, this experiment could be repeated many times over and we would get the same result every time.

Strictly speaking, its difficult to deny that this reflects a situation in which the person is completely free in his decision. On the other hand, it is also difficult to see how this is an adequate analogy to what the Calvinist is proposing, for it ignores the essential moral element in the situation. It must also be supposed that eating peanut butter is a moral obligation given to us by God whereas eating the steak is the sinful choice. It must also be supposed, according to the Calvinist, that our distaste for peanut butter is a result of inheriting Adam’s sinfulness or fallen nature. Finally, we must assume that there is no possible circumstance where the natural man would choose to eat peanut butter over the steak, even if his life depended on it (peanut butter must taste that bad).

Given these three clarifications its difficult to see how this is in anyway a description of genuine free will, or the ability to make moral decisions. For genuine free will to exist there must be a circumstance where the person would choose to eat the peanut butter over the steak. If this is not the case, whatever free will we do have is of no consequence. In other words, it would be no different if we had no free will. But if this is the case in what meaningful way does the Calvinist system allow us to have free will? In addition to this, genuine free will requires that our will not be determine by antecedent factors such that our moral desires are totally fixed. If I were given chemical injections as a child, for instance, which made me perpetually happy about working in a factory as a slave that obviously wouldn’t be genuine happiness. Similarly, if Adam’s sin caused man’s nature to fall so far that our wills are destined to despise God no matter what we do, its again difficult if not impossible to see how we have free will regardless of whether or not God permits or directly causes our behavior.

In response to this, the Calvinist may respond that even though we don’t have genuine free will it is nevertheless our desires which caused our sins and thus God is still just for punishing us for our sins. Well not really, not if our desires are forced upon us such that there is no way we could freely respond differently to God. I still see no way out of this problem for the Calvinist except to bite the bullet and say justice and all other moral concepts are not only grounded in God but defined by the will of God. I think this is a view that we ought to reject especially since it is not required by the Biblical text.

Of course the usual go to verse for a refutation of my prior statement is Romans 3:11-12 which states “No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” This is a poor proof text for the Calvinist position that man could never, under any circumstance, choose to do good or to respond in faith towards Christ. All this passage is pointing out is that the natural man does not actively seek out God nor have any desire to do so. It doesn’t say that if God pursues them and “knocks on their door” so to speak that they wouldn’t be able to change their mind. To go back to the peanut butter analogy, this passage doesn’t require you to believe that if a doctor told the person making that decision if they don’t eat the peanut butter they will die in the next 30 seconds still wouldn’t eat the peanut butter.

But even if we suppose that natural man can’t even respond to God in faith then it certainly seems possible that God could give that person a sort of prevenient grace such that they could make a genuinely free decision.

As of yet I have not heard a compelling response to these objections but I hope to hear it if it is out there. Until then I pray Calvinists will head this message and correct their theology accordingly.

Beauty in Theology?

Theology is thought of as many things; systematic, boring, dull, archaic, optional, secondary, intellectual, pompous, abstract, doctrinal etc, but it is seldom if ever described as beautiful, especially within the Church. Why is this the case? Why do we treat the Trinity as simply a statement or creed to be checked off on and placed on a shelf to collect dust? Surely there is a basic idea of the Trinity that is the bare necessity and basic foundation of the Orthodox teaching, but is there more to it than this? If so, why have we neglected such truth? The answer is simple, Christians have been obsessed with a defensive war against secularism. We frame doctrine in defensive terms; “The Bible is inerrant, it contains NO errors!” “Salvation is by faith alone NOT by works!” or “God is sovereign and CANNOT fail!” meaning that we have “Assurance of Salvation, we need NOT doubt!” It is clear from reading popular books on salvation, the church and God that our theology is being developed from a position of fear and defense. We fear committing heresy, so we keep our theology simple, we fear the objections of skeptics and outsiders, so we keep our faith sheltered, we fear our own doubts and failures, so we assure ourselves of the basic truths of the gospel. It seems to me the Church cannot continue like this, theology, in order to be effective and carry the powerful message of Christ must be considered from a position of beauty and standing in awe of the God we worship, not only fear of what our theology might become. We must boldy go where popular Christianity refuses to go! We must once again find beauty and elegance in the truths we defend and proclaim! If we do not, what is left to defend?

The atheist's dangerous delusion of moral superiority.

Going on secular/atheist blog's and websites today one can hardly ignore the growing sentiment that lacking belief in god, or believing that there is no god is conducive, in and of itself, to a more peaceful society. If only it were that simple. Unfortunately said atheists aren't all that familiar with history. They rightly claim, it would seem, that Hitler was not an atheist, but falsely attribute theistic beliefs to men like Stalin and Lenin. The fact is there is little to no evidence for such an assertion and even if it were true, it wouldn't negate the abhorrent atrocities committed by atheists against so man millions of civilians. Aha, they say, but those atheists didn't commit such atrocities because they were atheists, but because they were caught in the cult of communism where the state is worshiped with the same fervor as any god would be.

First things first, in giving this response the atheist is clearly moving the goalposts here. No longer are they claiming that atheism in and of itself is conducive to a peaceful society, but rather that atheism cannot be used as a motivation for atrocities such as those committed by the Soviet Union. But, putting that small point aside for now, the fact is this latter point is rather moot. Given some thought, its rather clear that only moral or ethical beliefs can really be motivations for committing atrocities. The Nazi's did not kill millions of Jews because they were theists, but because they thought Jews were evil, and they thought Jews were evil because they believed God (the god's?) ordained the Aryan race for world domination and made the Jews less than human. But these are all the realm of ethical/meta-ethical claims, not metaphysical claims.

Understanding this, it seems a bizarre thing to suggest that ethical beliefs, in conjunction with atheism, could not motivate immoral actions like rape or murder. Unfortunately history confirms the suspicion that this is not the case. From 1928-1941 the Soviet Union targeted clergy and members of the Russian Orthodox church, slaughtering them in the streets by the thousands and sending thousands more to labour camps. By 1942 there were only 500 Orthodox churches left intact in the entire Soviet Union. In 1937 alone 85 thousand clergymen were shot and killed. What's more, contrary to official pronouncements to the contrary, the complete dismantlement of the Russian Orthodox Church was not done for merely legal or political reasons, it was done for ideological reasons, to enforce state atheism. This was clearly seen in the propaganda of the time, which displayed religion and religious people as ignorant, sub-human, dangerous and silly. What is truly disturbing is just how similar these sentiments sound to modern atheists views of religion. 

Given these disturbing facts I would urge people of all worldviews to carefully moniter their ethical beliefs. It is far too easy for good intentions to have disastrous consequences.

Empiricism?

The question of knowledge is a very interesting one. What is it and how do we attain it? These are two fundamental questions in philosophy, but here I’m going to focus primarily on the latter, and a particular answer to it at that. This answer is empiricism, the theory that all knowledge comes via sensory experience. To make a few clarifications this theory isn’t quite the same as  hard scientism, which suggests that only the scientific method can verify or falsify that which is claimed to be true, although scientism could be thought of as a type of empiricism. Empiricism is simply the claim that all of our beliefs must be justified on the bases of sense perception/observation.

But is this true? It certainly seems to have some credence to it, after all, the natural sciences are certainly some of the most successful intellectual projects in the history of mankind. Even more so language, art and virtually all of our ideas and concepts seem to be based to varying degrees in what we have observed. Indeed, I think this is where much of the truth of empiricism lies.

It seems to me that while it may not be true that we could never think as an un-embodied mind devoid of all senses, it is nevertheless true that observation is a necessary step towards knowledge and reasoning. This is simply because of the basic fact that in order to perform analysis, or reasoning, we must first have data, but if this is true we must first gather data before we can analyze it, and what other data gathering tools do we have other than our senses? So observations allow us to form languages (even though those languages obviously won’t be directly based on our observations), ideas, art, science etc. But, notice, after data is gathered, it is reasoning that produces new information, new ways to use our senses to gather more information among many other things. Thus, observations by themselves are next to useless if there is no reason to interpret them. It is this fact that makes me doubt empiricism is true, for obviously we can use reason to justify beliefs, apart from mere observation.

Take Hilberts hotel for instance. Suppose we have a hotel with an infinite number of guests in it, filling the hotel. One day a bus, carrying an infinite number of new guests arrives, what is the hotel owner to do? Well, its quite simple, all he has to do is have every guest move to the room number which is double their own. Magically, this frees up an infinite number of rooms, thus infinity can be added to infinity and result in infinity. But it gets worse, as you could do this an infinite number of times. But it gets even worse than that, for what if an infinite number of guests decide to leave the hotel. Well, if the hotel owner has every room emptied there would be no one left in the hotel. However, if the owner of the hotel instead has everyone in an odd numbered room leave, he would still have an infinite number of people in his hotel in the even numbered rooms. So subtracting infinity from infinity can equal zero but it can also equal infinity. But it gets even worse than that, for if the owner has every one in a room with the number 1 in it leave, then has every one in a room with a number 2 in it leave etc on to infinity, the owner of the hotel could have an infinite number of people leave the hotel over and over again an infinite number of times, and still have an infinite number of people in his hotel. With this in mind, one must ask the question, how could an infinite number of anything really exist? I fail to see how.

This thought experiment is important because it demonstrates how useful reason can be without using observation as even supporting evidence. All observation does in this experiment is allow us to conceive of a hotel, people in the hotel etc. Therefore, given this I think any form of strong empiricism is unjustified.

But there is still weak empiricism, which could be framed as follows; observation provides the strongest possible support for our beliefs. And this I’ll investigate in another post.