A medley of short thoughts
Theological fact-checkers?, the law as teacher, progressive transhumanism, innumerate high officials, and driveway garden update!
After that bit of humor, I’ll just jump right in here.
Theological fact-checkers?
I am teaching Physical Science to 7th-8th graders for the first time… much you could say about that, I do appreciate their youthful energy and humor! The textbook we are using is Novare’s Physical Science by John Mays. And it’s a fine book. I think our students might wonder why they seem to open it so rarely, since I have that college professor arrogance still that “I will explain this to you better than the textbook, the textbook mainly exists to inspire my own commentary on the subject!”
The book is written for Christian schools and students, but (my impression so far anyway) the author largely sidesteps any major engagement with how to reconcile science with the book of Genesis; he doesn’t spend time defending any particular view of creationism, in other words. And you can understand why he makes that choice and I might make the same choice - it really would be a distraction from almost everything else that he is trying to teach, and any choice he made would also reduce textbook sales.
I was therefore surprised… yesterday I was reading through a section sort of about observations and conclusions from science that sync well with Christian theology. One of the conclusions mentioned is, “the universe had a beginning”. And it is true that, via the Big Bang Theory, nearly all scientists today would agree that the universe had a beginning. And it is also true that, when this theory was first proposed, the idea that the universe had a beginning bothered a lot of people because of the obvious theological import. The idea that the universe had merely always been was more comfortable to materialists (although the idea that the universe had always been would seem to run into the “there are no real infinities” problem1).
But then the author surely realizes he has stirred discomfort in some readers, as he is near to saying “the Big Bang Theory supports Christian theology”… but wait a minute, don’t many Christians themselves have a problem with this idea that the universe began in an explosion 14 billion years ago and has been naturally evolving since? And so he ends that section with, "But as many able Christian scholars have shown in recent years, it [the Big Bang theory] does not [contradict the Bible]." And then he moves onto his next example, “All nature exhibits exquisite balance”.
It was interesting to me how my 2022-ears hear such a statement. I would have no problem whatsoever with him saying, “in my opinion, the Big Bang Theory does not contradict the Bible”. However what he actually said sounded, to my 2022-ears, like “but according to fact-checkers and experts, the Big Bang theory does not contradict the Bible”. In fact I can totally imagine exactly that sentence appearing in Twitter’s propaganda corner some day if it fits the right news item. Well my 2022-self doesn’t like talk like that at all. You can’t just make vague appeals to the credentialed in 2022, you have to actually make the case!
But that does also get into what is perhaps the central problem of teaching, which is limited time. Perhaps it would take me two weeks to cover this topic seriously. Or perhaps it would take me two chapters of a textbook to cover this seriously. So what am I supposed to do? No doubt all teachers find themselves saying from time to time, “I can’t prove this to you right now, but it has been established that…”
The law as teacher
R.R. Reno, in the latest First Things, shared a stupendous example of the law as teacher. In June, Missouri became the first state to ban abortion following the overturn of Roe. (And can I just say that, one, I’m not sure I believed that within my lifetime I would start seeing maps of which states had banned abortion. And two… ah, we lived in Missouri for almost ten years and ah, how much better are the state politics there than in Michigan. Ah.)
Well, because of that ban more women are going across the river into Illinois to get an abortion. But Illinois abortion clinics have noticed a change in these women… they now show an increased concern that they are doing something wrong.
In the wake of Roe falling, discussions with patients have gotten more difficult. Patients are more strongly voicing feelings like they are doing something that’s wrong or illegal. Or they’re experiencing a larger amount of confusion about their decision to terminate because there’s this bigger overarching idea of “Well, if the Supreme Court or the government says that this isn’t legal, then I’m clearly doing something wrong.”
We’ve started to see patients in absolute crisis. At the clinic, we hear over and over, “Oh, it’s illegal in my state. Oh, I can’t do that.”
Patients are also dealing with a larger amount of indecision and internalized stigma. They’re saying, “Oh, I don’t want to murder my baby,” or statements that reference this larger discussion that we’ve all been hearing.
The last sentence there is incredible. If my state made abortion illegal, they must have had a good reason to do so, right? Maybe it is murder. On the flip side, if it’s legal, it’s probably fine from a moral perspective as well.
I realize that if you’re reading this, you’re thinking with a little more nuance than that, because you realize that in the present world doing good might get you investigated by the FBI, and doing bad might be applauded by the present regime. But certainly how we train children, and perhaps how all humans naturally think, the law helps teach us what is right and wrong.
Per my previous post, this is one more reason Republicans are stupid to wait until the public is already behind idea X before they dare to state their support of X. You think that is how progressivism advanced? No, progressive leaders didn’t wait for the public to affirm their crazy ideas, they often mandated them first and then the public started to affirm them. Leaders have to lead.
Progressive transhumanism
I have said from time to time that modern US progressivism, inasmuch as it has any consistent set of beliefs at all, consists of a sort of technocratic transhumanist statism. As further illustration of that fact, here is a story making the rounds these last few days.
Here is the link to the full story if you’d like. So yes, a couple of gay men decide they want a child but are, of course, biologically incapable of doing this by themselves. But, with their own sperm, an egg donor, a bunch of technology, and a woman willing to carry the child until birth, they could “have a child themselves”, but they find this will cost them at least $200,000. How outrageous that a heterosexual couple can just have a child, but it will cost them $200,000! And they conclude, not “well that’s just how nature made men and women”, but rather “this difference constitutes illegal discrimination, and the state should rectify it”. (Now to be fair to them, it is pointed out that their insurance would apparently cover at least the IVF part of all of this if they were a lesbian couple, but won’t cover it for them.) So now they are suing the city of New York for “unlawful workplace discrimination”.
But I had the thought that, this is progressivism today. Progressivism is super uncomfortable with the fact that humans are different, and through technology, it is the duty of the state to flatten all of those differences, at any cost. (That this flattening search for equality often leads to a lower quality of life for everyone… oh well.) If I may type something unpopular, you could parallel this to the ADA lawsuits during COVID that argued that disability law actually required all the students in a K-12 school to mask, because one child who attended the school at was at enhanced risk from disease. People are different. Yes, some people are at higher risk from disease than others. Ergo the state should, in that case, compel everyone to use technology (in a way that makes life worse for everyone) in an attempt to flatten those differences. This is progressivism today, a sort of statist transhumanism.
Innumerate high officials
One final thing here… random citizens are continuing to demonstrate that they understand health statistics better than, in this case, the former Surgeon General of the United States.
Basically, a few days ago the US reported over 600 COVID deaths in one day. There are a couple of problems with that number. First of all, even still today, US COVID death statistics remain extremely suspect because we still don’t know whether those people died because of COVID, or merely tested positive as they died from something else. But, the problem Kelley was highlighting here was that not all states report their numbers daily. So, depending on what day you check, the raw “daily COVID deaths” may actually include multiple days of numbers from some states (hence, as she says “why we use 7-day averages”). She, an intelligent mom from Georgia with no credentials in any health field, understood what was happening almost immediately, whereas Jerome Adams, the former Surgeon General, did not.
I am still not sure how we should resolve this problem as a society. It’s actually parallel to “the law as teacher” - people generally expect authorities to be trustworthy and know what they are doing. And many of them, today, are not and do not. Be nice if we could elect some good leaders who just cared about honesty and competence who would clean house on these folks. In the meantime, be thou not too impressed by credentials and honors in 2022. Or too concerned if they are missing.
Driveway garden update!
Follow up to this post! We are eating potatoes.
THE END
Basically, if the universe had existed for a truly infinite amount of time, you never get to now. The mere fact that you are reading these words would seem to indicate that the universe is not infinitely old.
Very interesting read. I’ve been wondering for a while now if “flattening the curve” did not refer to Covid at all but rather flattening the curve of social differences.
Great post, again, David.
Since there is only one Law that corresponds perfectly with What is Good, Right, and Salutary, this innate association of /legal/ and /moral/ is very revealing. For me it confirms that a nation's laws must be a reflection of God's Laws, nothing more or less.
Regarding your teaching question, "So what am I supposed to do?" Have you considered writing your own text book?