quick note

Posted By on June 16, 2013

I’m going to be without consistent internet connection from tomorrow (Sunday) through Thursday night – going on a cruise, so while I may have phone access I’m not sure. Since I won’t be around for much of this week I’ll be doing a single internet round-up next weekend. In the meantime you can always find the memes and videos I collect at pinterest, or the articles and blog posts I plan to share on tumblr.

I also finally got around to reading “A Long-expected Party.” Splendiferous, as always! Blog post reacting to that to come when I get back.

Enjoy your week, guys! And if you talk about something you’d like me to see, please drop me a link in the comments so I don’t miss it.

internet round-up, June 2-8

Posted By on June 11, 2013

Here we go again. Sorry this round-up is a few days late. Enjoy!

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Desolation of Smaug trailer

Posted By on June 11, 2013

So, I finally got to see the new Hobbit trailer. Spoilery goodness below the cut.

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I’m famous!

Posted By on June 6, 2013

… well, sort of.

A while ago I posted a comment on “The Anxious Bench” blog. The historian John Turner wrote about a controversy in how some American colleges regulate religious student groups. The question is whether groups are officially recognized by the university, and sometimes but not always whether they get a cut of the student fees the university collects; I talked about how funding and recognizing the groups seemed reasonable, but only if those religious groups were also willing to recognize and fund groups they disagreed with.

It’s a topic I’m interested in as a perpetual student, and my comment went on a bit long. But I didn’t seriously expect people to read it, except the other folks who read that blog post. Imagine my surprise when a friend recommended a new blog for me to follow, and in working my way through older entries, I found a whole post devoted just to my comment.

http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2013/05/24/pay-your-enemies-the-new-front-in-campus-culture-wars

It looks to be a neat blog, and not just because the author had the good sense to shine a spotlight on me. ;-) Mainly I’m chuffed to get a bit of recognition, and gratified someone thought my idea was worth drawing attention to.

In other news (and this is crossposted from FB, with minor tweakage):

Tomorrow is my friend Timothy’s birthday, and I’d like to introduce a few of my friends to his book as a gift to him. And of course as a mathom to you – in the best hobbit tradition, I want to share something I’ve enjoyed with my friends.

Tim was an evangelical Christian (and heterosexual) who decided he needed to learn what it was like to live as a homosexual. This book is a personal memoir of that year. At first I had my problems with the premise, but the way he presents it – not as a journalistic expose, but something he felt like he needed to do in order to truly love his gay neighbor – convinced me that this is a book worth reading. It’s not for everybody – if you look at the premise and think there’s no way you could ever accept his course of action, then I wouldn’t recommend it for you. (And no judgment on that count, as we all have different things we find more objectionable than others.) But if you can imagine someone presenting himself as gay and that seeming like a needed or even good experience in some cases, I’d say it’s definitely wroth a read. Tim is a good storyteller and his experiences are compelling.

Check out the book at Amazon (http://amzn.to/10RMr7u), and if you’re interested email me privately at mlayton-AT-fordham-DOT-edu. I’ll be purchasing Kindle versions for friends to support Tim, and Amazon will email you an access code you can use to download the book.

standing on the shoulders of giants

Posted By on June 5, 2013

Earlier I wrote about Rawls, particularly his idea that meritocracy (the idea a system should recognize and reward merit rather than things like inherited wealth and privilege) was essentially unjust. He’s not saying that we shouldn’t reward people for their skills, because doing so is one way to enable the best-qualified people to do well and also to attract the best-qualified people to a certain job in the first place. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking this is a just reward to people who have certain gifts. Rawls doesn’t make this point clear (to my knowledge), but he is coming very close to a teaching that’s at the heart of my brand of Christianity: stewardship rather than ownership.

Let me start with a joke you hear a lot in church circles:

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and get lost.”

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this, let’s say we have a man making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “OK, great!”

But God added, “Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.”

The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!”

(taken from GetYourOwnDirt.com – really, someone bought this domain just to host that joke)

I’m not crazy about this idea that if science could answer enough questions this would drive out the need for God; that whole approach to God seems off to me, whether you’re saying scientists have made enough progress or not. But I do like the point that all of us humans, scientists or otherwise, have inherited our starting point. And this is what I think Rawls is coming close to. We are born with certain genetic predispositions which are valued by our community (or not). We are born into a family with the means to train us and offer us opportunities (or not). We are born into a community that is committed to our development in every way (or not). All of this happens before I have any ability to affect the world I’m growing in. This is the “dirt” the scientist reaches for, assumes is his to use. But it’s misguided to think that the same dirt is available to everyone or, even if it is, that we have some kind of claim to everything coming out of our efforts as some kind of “just due.” It may be right we have access to some, even all, of that good. But it’s not because it’s ours.

Here’s where the Christian teaching I grew up with comes into play. Incidentally, I’ve also seen this approach in secular groups, particularly eco-activists, and students of mine from India who didn’t grow up with any particular philosophy. Basically, we should think of ourselves as stewards of a world that we have no claim to. It’s our job to use the earth effectively and preserve it, to use our talents and abilities to build community and care for those around us. But we don’t get any great claim to the results, because we’re working with dirt that was already there to begin with. We should be proud of what we’ve made and should use whatever we produce to sustain ourselves and we should leave “gleanings” that those who don’t have the opportunity or ability to use their own talents (either because they don’t have talents or lack opportunity). But we shouldn’t think of it as what’s owed us. It’s stewardship, not ownership.

Case in point: Manwe. (more…)

John Rawls in the NY Times Blogs (suprise, surprise)

Posted By on June 5, 2013

Over at his NYTimes.com blog, Paul Krugman talked about Ben Bernanke’s recent speech, particularly about its Rawlsian influence:

OK, this is, whether BB realizes it or not (he probably does) basically a Rawlsian view of the world, in which you think of life as a kind of lottery in which you draw a ticket that includes things like your genetic endowment as well as the wealth of your parents. And what you’re supposed to do, ethically, is support the economic and social system you would choose if you had to enter that lottery not knowing what ticket you were going to draw — if you were making political choices behind the “veil of ignorance”.

As soon as you portray the choice that way, you’ve introduced a strong presumption in favor of redistribution. After all, if you should happen to end up as a member of the top 1 percent, an extra dollar at the margin won’t mean a lot to you; but if you should happen to end up as a member of, say, the bottom quintile, an extra dollar could make a lot of difference. So you should, other things equal, favor a system of progressive taxation and generous aid to the poor and unlucky.

(“Ben Bernanke Endorses a 73% Tax Rate“)

He’s half right about Rawls. In fairness, I know Rawls mostly via secondary sources; I’ve only ever read anthology excerpts from A Theory of Justice when I teach them, so I obviously know him in less detail than I should. But from what I understand, Krugman’s description of the “veil of ignorance” is a pretty good one, and so is his description of meritocracy as a lottery. There’s a definite idea in Rawls that if you are born smart or strong or whatever it is you possess, this fact doesn’t make you morally praiseworthy. So in a sense, a meritocracy where we reward people in proportion to their talents and abilities isn’t any more just than an aristocracy where we reward people in proportion to their wealth.

And as far as that goes, that seems right. If we give a college graduate more money or than we give someone who never graduated high school, it can’t be because said college graduate deserves the money more. Whatever it was that enabled the college graduate to climb that high – intelligence, parental income, work ethic, even being born into a community that supported him – is at some level the result of a lottery. You might say that the person who succeeds at college managed their natural gifts well so while the playing field isn’t entirely fair surely he deserves some credit. But that just raises the question a level higher. Why do we think we deserve credit for the drive that opens the way to success but not other things like wealth or natural intelligence?

But this doesn’t mean that Rawls would advocate for super-high tax rates. Dr. Krugman is missing the other side of the picture. A few passages from the ethics anthology I mentioned above (Justice: A Reader p. 214, for the interested). Rawls says that if we were all behind the veil of ignorance Krugman describes above, we’d settle on two main principles of justice:

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the Satan scorecard

Posted By on June 5, 2013

Apropos to yesterday’s post on fandom and religion, I thought some of you might get a kick out of this.

(h/t Fileg over at FB)

religion and fandom

Posted By on June 5, 2013

Ann turned me on to a delightful essay that I highly recommend:

A Believer in Fandom: Can Geek and Christian Mix, by Caroline Simcox

Caroline (a Church of England priest, husband to a sci-fi writer, and a long-time geek in her own right) writes about the way people in both the church and in fandom have reacted with surprise to the way she feels at home in both ways, and she talks about why she thinks this might be the case. Also, of course, why she thinks it doesn’t have to be the case. It’s really very interesting if you want to understand more of what people get out of religion, fandom, or both.

Her basic point is that the Christian church, at least in the UK where she lives, has a reputation for maintaining the status quo. Often this reputation is deserved, though she points out (and I agree) that Christianity started out as an outsider religion and at its best should be about challenging the powerful and comfortable. But the reputation is there and it’s easy to see where it came from. Fandom, on the other hand, can be a real refuge for outcasts, folks who don’t fit in with the status quo. It’s like C.S. Lewis wrote: Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” That “I thought I was the only one,” the relief that you aren’t – for so many people, that’s the real draw of fandom. That we can be ourselves without being by ourselves. (And yes, the irony that this is Lewis, Christian apologist and Narnia author all rolled into one, is not lost on me.)

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new ThinkChristian piece on homeschooling

Posted By on June 4, 2013

The website ThinkChristian.net graciously let me write a post on a recent Iowa law affecting homeschoolers. Currently, Iowa law lets parents homeschool their kids but requires the kids to be evaluated each year to make sure they’re making good academic progress. The new law doesn’t require any laws of the sort.

http://thinkchristian.net/why-christian-homeschoolers-should-welcome-government-oversight?utm_source=feedly

My basic point here is that Christians (or anyone, but giving the context this is addressed specifically to Christians) have a special responsibility to watch out for our neighbors. They should be supportive of laws like the old Iowa law because it’s minimally intrusive but does a good job of catching parents who abuse their kids or simply who aren’t as diligent in educating them as they should be. I understand the feeling that a parent is responsible for their kids’ welfare – but I also know that sometimes the parent falls down, either through abuse or just by being overwhelmed or not as diligent as they should be. Kids have a right to, among other things, a decent education, and I wish more states were ready to ensure homeschooled children actually got one.

Incidentally, Libby Anne over at Love Joy Feminism has also written quite a bit on this case. I’d heard of it through a friend in Des Moines before I read about it on her blog, but Libby Anne’s posts definitely helped kindle my interest in the case. Some of the more interesting ones:

Homeschool Mom: Iowa’s Laws Helped My Children and Me [guest post]
Iowa Just Repealed All of Its Homeschool Requirements

Please do feel free to join the conversation, ideally at TC but I’d welcome comments here as well.

Forward Thinking: Now and at the Hour of Our Death

Posted By on June 3, 2013

A funny thing happened recently in the religious blogosphere. Pope Francis seemed to throw the gates of heaven wide open to everyone. The blogosphere was quite excited because this seemed to be a very progressive, tolerant approach to one of Christianity’s more offensive doctrines, the idea that God would condemn large numbers of people to eternal torture. Many blog posts and editorials were written, some by Catholics or at least people with some familiarity with theology, but most were written by religious journalists who fairly misrepresented what Francis had said. Then came the predictable walk-back by the Vatican, and the equally predictable disappointment of those who really wanted Francis to have taken the universalist route he was portrayed as taking.

Given the amount of misinformation and confusion surrounding this story, let me just let Il Papa speak for himself. According to NPR’s write-up of the incident, he said,

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class. We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all. And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: We will meet one another there.

For those wanting a little context, again from the NPR piece: “The pope was delivering a homily in the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta residence inside Vatican grounds where he has decided to live. He recites mass and delivers a homily there every morning except Sunday for Vatican employees and whoever else might be staying at the residence.”

And as a side note, I just noticed that I share my name with the humble boarding-house where the Pope lives. I believe it’s named after Saint Martha, the sister of Lazarus who asked Jesus to send her sister to help out in the kitchen when she was hosting the disciples, which is odd because in many ways I pride myself on being a Mary rather than a Martha in that pair. But I like the parallel. A humble, simple place where you can kick off your shoes and be at peace with yourself? That’s a lot of what I consider my best self. I can dig it.

Anyway, getting back to the Pope. Even before I saw the Vatican responded to this homily, I thought the press and blog reactions to it were largely misunderstanding his statement. I’m a lifelong Methodist who’s done a good bit of religious study as a Protestant, but I also have some familiarity with Catholic theology and practice, both through my maternal extended family which is mostly Catholic and through my own experience in the Catholic education system. (I attended a local parochial school for grades 6-8, and currently am doing a philosophy doctorate at a Jesuit college.) So I know just enough Catholic theology to be dangerous, and just enough Protestant theology that the similar points all bleed together. With that caveat in mind…

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