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first, rather than explain yet another virtual absence, i’ll point you to some things that have unapologetically stolen my time. with any luck, you’ll get lost in at least one of them, and forget that you haven’t read anything here for a while.
{google reader; tiddlywiki; enc of philosophy, eg the problem of induction; the ugly insides of data acquisition; etc}

ny times, glynis sweeny

at any rate, nytimes had a much-needed op-ed by mike males, a guy who helped to start youthfacts.org. the article and the site try dispelling myths about youths. males makes several interesting points as he demonstrates a “ballooning crisis” among americans aged 35-54 in traditionally adolescent issues like drug and alcohol abuse. beware of his numbers comparisons, though, such as this one: of all 35-54 years old americans, “21 million [are] binge drinkers (those downing five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month), double the number among teenagers and college students combined…” here, the adult group range is twenty years, whereas “teenagers and college students” are an age-group spanning only ten years. that is, the population size is probably about double, making roughly the same percentage of binge drinkers in the two age groups.

what i especially appreciated about males’ piece, though, was his willingness to challenge claims about youths that are traditionally made on the basis of irrelevant or misrepresented research studies. i’m not the first to complain about this: the media’s science fetishism, mixed with its sound-byte sensationalism, render impossible any attempt to fully gather data and make fair interpretations. of course, the answer isn’t to downplay the significance or applicability of research… perhaps just to rein in the lay coverage of its conclusion.

for comparison, see also this interesting scientific american human behavioral and fMRI result regarding political disposition and internal conflict. here’s a quotation from the article, which was a review of a recent nature neuroscience paper: ” ‘They are more sensitive to the need for change and more sensitive to the need to change their behavior,’ Amodio says about the politically left-leaning subjects.”

the village voice, an internet daily focusing on nyc culture and politics, serves up “a graphical dissertation on the number one song in america,” rap artist mims’ inimitable this is why i’m hot. when i first heard this song, i could actually hear my own frontal cortical neurons committing suicide. it confirms the death knoll sounded in idiocracy last year and in george orwell last century. (thanks to vt and bm for the tip. the figure is modified from vv’s figure 3).

from the article:

The other remarkable, oft-quoted line in “This Is Why I’m Hot” is “I could sell a mil’ sayin’ nothin’ on a track.” Critics gibe that “This Is Why I’m Hot” proves precisely that; others muse on what Mims would sell if he deigned to actually say something on a track. Would he sell less than a mil’? Exactly a mil’, as when he said nothing? Or a great deal more than a mil’? The song does not elaborate.

the flapperome

it’s not news that scientists aren’t all linguists. but that ain’t no excuse for the nominal slop that pervades biological appelation. perhaps the most notorious of cases, and the subject of today’s exposé, begins in the 1920s: flappers were a dime a dozen, histologists were still arguing over the neuron doctrine, and a forty-something german botanist was coining the term genome. with it, he unwittingly hacked open a pandora’s box of lingual lament, unleashing the phoneme-turned-meme -ome to a world poised to beat it to death. the inevitable ome-philia is now as annoyingly crazy as its shakespearean counterpart; one can only wish it were as self-destructive.

an ome-ome

these days, new *-omes appear daily. perhaps, as colleague dh pointed out in conversation, it’s due to the success of the human genome project, especially as compared to its drunk-in-a-gutter step-brother, the human brain project. here are a few of its more colorful manifestations: the human cytome project, the human epigenome project, the human GNU-ome project, the human Jen-ome project, the american meme-ome project.

the range of possibilities is much greater when it’s not a “human project”: the proteome (coined by mark wilkins, 1995), the metabolome (coined by oliver et al, 1998), the interactome, the transcriptome, the davematthewsome… the list goes on. what spawned my own expl-ome-ation was the new fix that the neuroscience community has with omomics… presenting [drum roll please]… the connectome (PLOS biology article and the obligatory dotcom attempt). it begs the question: what’s in an -ome? surely, people recognize how passé (and strange) it is to affix their favorite subject’s moniker to the -ome suffix: most of these things have nothing to do with chromosomes. but maybe that’s not the real origin of -ome…

et-ome-ology

in the 2 april 2001 edition of the scientist, lederberg and mccray offered a brief but entertaining account of the etymology: ‘ome sweet ‘ome-ics. the authors are iconoclastic enough to suggest that OED gets it wrong. OED suggests that botanist hans winkler, who was the first to use the term in 1920, coupled “gen” from gene and “ome” from chromosome. meanwhile, lederberg and mccray point out three other intriguing, if not all etymologically plausible, facts. 1) there are a number of botanical terms that predated winkler and his cronies in the 20’s, and may have provided more proximate motivation than the term “chromosome”; 2) in Greek, the suffix denotes “having the nature of” ([2], by way of [1]); 3) in Sanskrit, it means “fullness [and] completeness” [1]. beautiful, but winkler was a german at a time when indians were brits… and nobody likes brits.

in the end, skill and passion go hand in hand with the best of science, no matter how it’s dubbed. in that vein, perhaps the old aphorism says it best: ‘ome is where the ‘art is.

UPDATE: see notes from a recent seminar on connectomics (in case you’re still interested).

also see:
[1] Lederberg and McCray. ‘Ome Sweet ‘Omics–A Genealogical Treasury of Words.
[2] Roland Brown. Composition of Scientific Words.
[3] Walter Flood. Scientific Words.
[4] Sporns et al. The Human Connectome: A Structural Description of the Human Brain.

don wrote a book called blue like jazz. don says God loves me. and he’s right, because my soul says it’s true.

okay, that’s all the artifice i can handle… the rest will be a review of don miller’s blue like jazz, in the style of BoSci. i’ll make three points, one backhanded compliment and two forehanded criticisms.

first, his writing seems to be a reaction to the coopting of the christian soul by the american evangelical church of the late twentieth century. there’s no need to search for your soul when jesus has found and saved it. or, at least that’s a common perception. i’ll deal in a future post with the reformed christian reaction to this perceived hijacking of introspection from christian spirituality.

one reaction to this perception has been the emerging church, a movement that engages a wider range of spiritually-interested people by conversational christian witness, iconoclastic postmodernism, and occasional antinomianism. miller’s style sets him in this crowd, though his own theology isn’t given explicitly in the book. reacting to a texas upbringing presumably devoid of introspection, miller seems to be working through a deeply meaningful personal project to re-envision his own soul. for example, he writes extended sections that, kuyper aside*, have little to do with christianity, but everything to do with human nature. for example, he includes an extended discussion about loneliness. while the narrative has overtones of fulfillment through christ, he seems to couch it in a way that emphasizes his own soulful exploration of the human need for other humans. at times it gets too tuesdays-with-morey-esque, but i appreciate his attempt to come to terms with oppressive religiousity.

second, he writes in this trendy way of pretending to approach things as a passive observer, trying to make sense of the data of the world. but he already has such deep preconceptions about god that when he says something that superficially sounds so innocent–”tony says god loves me”–he comes off as part of the very authoritarian fundies he’s trying to undermine. decentralized sovereignty is still sovereignty. in the end, it almost seems that miller wants to dupe readers into seeing the consistency in his and others’ experiences as evidence for god. but he hasn’t bothered engaging the question of god’s existence.

third, the book is a narrative in every sense of the word… it makes kerouac sound like kant. to be sure, blue is the unfolding journey of miller’s spiritual life in community told through experience and revelation, but the problem he’s trying to solve is ill-posed. he may be using this ambiguity to parallel the confusion of any christian spiritual journey: sometimes it is about understanding grace and thus improving your relationship with christ (chapter 7). other times it is about recognizing personal hypocrisy while damning others (chapter 8). and even other times it is about discerning whether god exists (again, not covered, in my opinion). ultimately, his narrative style precludes him from any serious discussion of his dearest-held assumptions, and instead allows him to present a brand of christianity that serves as a social crutch for issues like love, guilt, groups, and the notion of right and wrong.

________
* abraham kuyper: “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: mine!”

in case you haven’t heard, the copyright royalty board recently demanded a hike to webcasters’ per-song royalty so high that it puts smaller and independent webcasters at risk of closure. if you ever listen to online radio, please take a moment to stop by free press, a public-interest organization with a focus on media that’s helping raise awareness about the issue. they have a pre-written “Email your Congressman” form that takes a few seconds to send. thanks!

since several blogs o’ neuro deal with general and popular issues in the field, BoSci might contribute a bit with posts specific to systems neuroscience. in that spirit, here’s a roundup of some papers that caught my eye over the last week… this might become a weekly review.

first off, something unrelated to neuroscience, though. a somewhat quizzical editorial in nature suggests that “brain drain” ain’t so bad. the argument, put forward by economist michael clemens at an aaas meeting a few weeks back, points out the benefits of shipping out home-trained professionals: greater knowledge of global trends, more money earned and sent home, and the return of nearly half of further-trained emigres later in their careers. the trick, as the article points out, is figuring out the balance of proximally deleterious versus long-term beneficial effects. but then the editorial goes whack… on what i think is a point of pride for the brits. here are the last three paragraphs in full:

Similar observations could be made regarding emigration flows between wealthy nations. According to the World Bank, Britain has more professional émigrés than any nation on Earth. But it doesn’t seem to be hurting. California’s research labs may be crawling with Brits, yet UK science has gone from strength to strength. According to surveys of citations against expenditure, Britain has one of the most productive research systems in the world. How can this be?

Well, say the revisionists, science departments at British universities may actually benefit from the ambition to depart, and, to a lesser degree, from their connections with those who have done so. Perish the thought, but some of these mobile researchers may even do the best work of their lives at Salford, say, only to take their foot ever-so-slightly off the gas when they ‘arrive’ at Stanford.

Woody Allen once observed that the sole cultural advantage of California (over his native New York, presumably) was its law permitting you to turn right at a red light. To be fair, science and industry in the Golden State have clearly benefited to a massive degree from immigrant talent gleaned from every corner of the planet. But the notion that other places have necessarily suffered a corresponding loss — or that emigration is a zero-sum game — is misplaced.

huh? what starts as a legitimate point on the concerns of developing countries becomes a juvenile, postcolonial hissyfit about how britian’s still damn good. fair enough, san diego has about as much culture as my left birkenstock, but what do woody allen and culture have to do with the best science in the world? brits take note: the best researcher might be the one in the lab, not the theater.

hmmm, since that editorial got me a bit riled, i’ll take a break and return with some actual science in part II

thanks to kate for the tip on the second clip.

nytimes dealt with the recent gay sheep publicity debacle best; see here.

i just read sam harris’s letter to a christian nation, and i wish i could get back the hour he stole from my life. the book’s not deserving of critical review (or even any more than one or two cheap jokes).

i can’t help mentioning two serious weaknesses though. for background, his thesis is that fundamentalist religion is driving the world towards imminent destruction, and the only way to stop it is to drive out fundamentalism.

1. does he really believe that removing religion from the human experience will stop organized destruction?

2. even if he thinks he’s on to something big, he really misread his audience. this is surprising, since the name of his audience shows up in the title of his book. but with around 85-90%* of americans claiming to have some kind of faith, his unmitigated anger toward people of faith won’t help his readers see his point.

i guess harris was trying for a quick-and-dirty argument for why we should be less religious. but his arguments are so shallow that, while they of course hold no weight with fundamentalists, they must strike moderates as juvenile as well. really, the only reason this book could possibly have been published is because of the success of his first book, which i’m now quite anxious to avoid… for your benefit, it will go unplugged here.

if he thinks of himself as an intellectual (instead of the angst-ridden teen he writes as), he really ought to be ashamed.

_____
* this stat is from a quick google search. see here and, if you can afford it, here. if you have a more accurate estimate, feel free to comment.

in case you’ve been in hydrogenation-induced coma over the last few weeks, nyc passed a measure on tuesday that prohibits restaurants from using trans fat. this is disturbingly hilarious on several fronts.

1. the LBJ-style uber-maternalization of government. of course trans fats are bad for you, but so are skittles, butter, and cake. historically, government was around for building roads and establishing security. now, it’s here for welfare, education, healthcare, building self-esteem, and establishing insecurity. i once read a delightfully non-pc book by a blissfully out-of-touch southern preacher detailing how the rise of feminism was the cause of all sorts of social evils, including this shift in politics from the safekeeping of the state to that of the individual. if you’re interested, ask me for the title; in public, i’d never admit to believing a word of it.
2. super-confused social liberals’ and conservatives’ heads are exploding. clove-smoking, tree-hugging vegetarians want freedom to choose their own food… they’ve been shouting ‘1984′ the whole week. on the other hand, though, they want to help obese people live more wisely, establish the “positive freedom” of good health, and end socioeconomic exploitation by mcfood. meanwhile, bowtie-wearing, hair-parting stiffs love enacting laws to enforce their conception of what’s right, but they don’t want to let down a great corporate lobby or give up that delicious mcchicken sandwich. here’s an all-too-graphic visual aid to help you remember this point:
3. the government is, almost literally, spoon-feeding us. reality has become a parody of itself. i’ll leave you the pleasure of coming up with other examples.

the one good reason for outlawing trans fat is that state-funded healthcare costs associated with it are exhorbitant (more on healthcare costs in a future post). but other arguments are weak. for example, some people claim that the public didn’t elect to have trans fats in their foods, so they shouldn’t have a say in phasing them out. um, i’m no economist, but i’d say the public demand for crisco since 1911 is a pretty good indicator of its popularity. if consumers are the end-users, they can decide, just as they do with cigarettes. in fact, public information campaigns and heavy taxes on fast food might be a better alternative. as another example, some say there’s a precendent for this measure in laws against drugs and alcohol. but this is a slippery slope argument; it could take us all the way to outlawing too little sleep because it makes you fat.

a lot of the arguments against the law are obvious, but a few warrant mention. first, it’s legally dubious that a city could outlaw something the fda has approved. second, to get the same taste in food, restaurants might use excessively high amounts of saturated fat, which aren’t much healthier (in fact, they’re one of the reasons for the success of the hydrogenated stuff to begin with). third, it could hurt, or even phase out, smaller restaurants more than the chains that are really to blame. fourth, it doesn’t outlaw all the trans fat sitting on grocery shelves: it’s still accessible.

eh, at least we don’t have to worry about the denizens of houston, winner of america’s fattest city four of the last five years. they’d never let legislation like this slip by. i mean, even new jerseyites, not exactly known for their fitness, didn’t let it slide: “elected officials in Chicago and New Jersey met with resistance — and even ridicule — when they proposed similar measures. Democratic state Sen. Ellen Karcher, who proposed the New Jersey measure in October, received such a wave of angry calls and letters that she temporarily closed her office.” (la times)

imrational posted a 5 minute video on youtube recently on why he thinks religion is important. included are tired references to the ‘non-christian founding father’ argument (our country wasn’t founded as a christian nation). on the whole, it’s all old, and not very compelling, news. but there was a reference to the treaty of tripoli that i wasn’t familiar with, so here’s a brief run-down:

• it was written by joel barlow in 1796, unanimously approved by senate in 1797, and signed by then president john adams.
• article 11 states: “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”

while initially interesting, the treaty, in the greater historical context, doesn’t seem to be knock-down evidence that the founding fathers were a pack of atheists. first, several more important and earlier documents clearly make christian (or at least deistic) claims, including the articles of confederation, declaration of independence, u.s. constitution, and the 1783 treaty with great britain. second, the treaty of tripoli was made with non-christians; political savvy may have suggested the need for article 11 in that historical context.

in poking around, i found (and edited) the wikipedia page on the treaty. it’s informative. i also found this informative essay on the treaty. these days, though, my history is pretty shabby, so if anybody has some ideas or good references on this issue, do tell.

a close friend* brought up yesterday how the news of christian love has been propogating through the media like wildfire since the shooting of ten amish schoolgirls last week. a quick google search suggests the same thing: the atrocity has been written about continuously since it happened, and the message of love has been very visible throughout the ordeal.

“As we were standing next to the body of this 13-year-old girl, the grandfather was tutoring the young boys, he was making a point, just saying to the family, ‘We must not think evil of this man,’ ” the Rev. Robert Schenck told CNN.

in a time when christian doctrine is exploited and maligned for duplicitous and–if you believe Chavez–diabolical ends, it is incredibly refreshing to see the genuine spirit of Christ in love practiced by the amish during the response to this incident. and somehow, the media hasn’t entirely buried the message of forgiveness.

*he is one of three people to whom i refer by title. the other two are his wife and jesus christ

david brooks raises some good points in his ny times oped comparing the social acceptance of female sexual predation in the vagina monologues and the universal outrage at the congressman’s frustrated flirting.

with the death of prominent australian men of machismo steve irwin and peter brock, blokes and mates are wondering what it takes to be a man. the question isn’t unique to the land down under; my bro recently addressed it in the most recent edition of revisions.
quoted in the bbc article, mark latham, author of a new book, says “Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss-bags.”

nature ran an article this week on the ethics and economics of human egg donation. the gist is that scientists and ethicists are concerned about whether to pay women for eggs obtained for research on therapeutic human cloning. paying women for their ova has gone on for a while… in our daily princetonian, we had the first national ad for egg donorship back in ‘97 (”looking for 5′8″-5′11″, blonde, SAT >1400, female of Swedish descent to donate some eggs for $40,000″). america has continued to have occasional cases in which a couple will pay exhorbitantly for some cute eggs, though i think remuneration is outlawed in britain. but IVF and research are two different issues, and only a few known madcap opportunists–such as woo suk hwang, of south korean shame–have paid for (or coerced women into donating) human eggs.

on june 30th, a task force set up by the International Society for Stem Cell Research released a draft of guidelines, which simply demonstrate how little consensus there is on the issue. according to the article, it’s open to public debate till september 1, at which point, i suppose, public debate is officially closed.

my current thinking is that the whole question is irrelevant. i go against the establishment on this one, but i’m actually against IVF in principle, since it necessarily generates unused embryos. if it hadn’t been for these storehouses at hospitals and fertility clinics, there never would have been such contention about “what we should do with all these embryos from 30 years of IVF!” and we could have addressed the social policy regarding ES cells with a little more clarity. sadly, the ‘byproducts’ of IVF are still oft ignored (or forgotten) even by more conservative politicians… perhaps because its benefits have already been realized by the conservative community. at any rate, there are lots of issues here (not the least of which is the potential to solve more than one problem by adopting “at-risk kids“) that require some ethical and scientific maturity. unfortunately, as jon stewart helps us recognize, we’re not there yet. but, more to the point, because of the deep moral issues associated with the status of the human embryo, i’m not convinced it should be used for research using federal funding. private funding? not so sure… but with regard to whether the cash would put too much pressure on underprivileged women to undergo a dangerous, invasive procedure, we have a precedent. in america, private organizations pay habitually-pregnant crack addicts to have their tubes tied. sure, it funds their next couple of hits. but no matter how strong a libertarian you are, you’ve got to admit that it’s a pretty good idea.

in response to a friend’s claim that the traditional conception of the trinity (God the father, son, and holy spirit) can be exchanged for any other instructive “metaphor”, i write this:

i appreciate your desire to be inclusive and open-minded… demonstrating the very spirit of Christ. i do think, though, that we need to be careful and consistent with our terms. the labels–father, son, and holy spirit–of the trinity aren’t metaphors–what is the metaphor of a holy spirit? while our understanding of the persons of the trinity might be sullied by our flawed fathers or sinful sons, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

the trinity represents an organic relationship that is simultaneously unitary and trinary (electrical engineers, stop cringing). the mystery of the trinity has been mulled over since tertullian, and it culminated in unitarians and others who found the idea of an ontological trinity unintelligible (moses stuart and w.a. brown, for example). but, we find reference to a trinity of these particular three persons throughout the Bible (the father and son in both testaments, and the spirit first explicitly manifested in acts).

karl barth revived the trinity with some 220 pages on its doctrine in his dogmatics, and presents the three persons in terms of God’s speaking: He is Revealer (father), Revelation (son), and Revealedness (holy spirit). (your guess is as good as mine on the office of the spirit..he says the spirit is the very content of the revelation). barth explains their offices in terms of truth revealed (john 1), but doesn’t reject or recast the persons of the trinity: they are still father, son, and holy spirit.

at best, there might be room for didactic analogies to the trinity, in light of man’s weakness, where analogy refers to an aspectual comparison to reality whereas a metaphor is a wholistic comparison (where the former is meant to explain a relationship in part, the latter in full). historically, people have used analogies such as mist, cloud, rain; intellect, affections, will, (augustine); thesis, antithesis, synthesis, (hegel); subject, object, and subject-object, (olshausen). all of these lack the divine personality inherent in the father-son-spirit relationship. and while mother-child-womb might have value for describing a specific personal relationship in the mystery of the Godhead, it can’t replace the specific biblical relationships (see matthew 3.16, 4.1; and all of john, especially 1.18, 3.16, 5.20-22, 14.26, 15.26, and 16.13-15). i really appreciate this explanation, from berkhof’s systematic theology (which has a good general discussion of the doctrine of God, and specifically the trinity, pp 82-99) :

The communicable attributes of God stress His personality, since they reveal Him as a rational and moral Being. His life stands out clearly before us in Scripture as a personal life; and it is, of course, of the greatest importance to maintain the personality of God, for without it there can be no religion in the real sense of the word: no prayer, no personal communion, no trustful reliance and no confident hope. Since man is created in the image of God, we learn to understand something of the personal life of God from the contemplation of personality as we know it in man.

in the end, the nature of the trinity is a grand mystery beyond our capacities, but praise God that we can even meditate on Him! in mystery is opportunity, enabling us to share in love the joy of the gospel with others, and to appreciate the personal struggles of others as they wrestle with divine truth: ” to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. Now this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I may be partaker of it with you.” (i cor 9)

let’s remember both the unfathomably perfect and the intimately personal nature of the Godhead, and our responsibility to share His love!

(also, thanks [other friend] for making the important distinction between pca and pcusa [which the article somewhat blurred]… the pca def has a rich, biblical, and necessarily Christ-centered theological tradition. i’d wholeheartedly recommend the small pca congregation i’ve joined in downtown LJ:new life mission church of la jolla.)

some stats on how the US ranks on several social issues.

USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD

USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37
(#1 France and #2 Italy)- World Health Organization 2003

USA Ranking of Student Reading Ability: #12
(#1 Finland and #2 South Korea)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Problem Solving Ability: #26
(#1 South Korea and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24
(#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19
(#1 Finland and #2 Japan)- OECD PISA 2003

USA Ranking on Women’s Rights Scale: #17
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- World Economic Forum Report

USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29
(#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong)- UN Human Development Report 2005

USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: #32
(#1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied)- Reporters Without Borders 2005

USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17
(#1 Iceland and #2 Finland)- Transparency International 2005

USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: #13
(#1 Ireland and #2 Switzerland)- The Economist Magazine …Wikipedia “Celtic Tiger” if you still have your doubts.

USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: #45
(#1 Finland and #2 Norway)- Yale University ESI 2005

USA Ranking on Overall Currency Strength: #3 (US Dollar)
(#1 UK pound sterling and #2 European Union euro)- FTSE 2006….the dollar is now a liability, so many banks worldwide have planned to switch to euro

USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32
(#1 Sweden and #2 Finland)- Save the Children Report 2006

USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): #10
(#1 Norway and #2 Iceland)- UN Human Development Report 2005

two opeds on premarital sex, one each from nytimes contributor lauren winner and chuck colson. i’m most impressed with winner’s assessment of the flawed ‘chastity pledge’:

“Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God’s grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.”

i’ve argued a version of this point with my own grandmother at thanksgiving dinner: without Christ, abstinence doesn’t make much sense (of course, if you’re stoically reasoned, you’ll recognize that most if not all research demonstrates that abstinence is the healthier choice). i’m chaste because i’m a christian.

at any rate, the fact that abstinence education hasn’t worked in practice (see below) is important to recognize for policy. but, more important, i think, is that this fact can be used in arguments against a successful naturalistic moral system. think about it… maybe i’ll post on it later.

both articles are reproduced below.

Saving Grace
Lauren F. Winner.
New York Times. May 19, 2006. pg. A.25.

Lauren F. Winner is the author of ‘’Girl Meets God'’ and ‘’Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity.'’

The recent Harvard study that found teenagers’ virginity pledges to be ineffective should come as a surprise to no one. Several studies had already come to that conclusion. If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage, Christians concerned about the rampant premarital sex in our communities need to rethink, rather than simply defend, young people’s abstinence pledges.

It is awfully easy for Christians to blame our community’s sexual sins on the mores of post-sexual revolution America — to criticize Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, to natter on about how ‘’Grey’s Anatomy'’ portrays sexual behavior that doesn’t square with Christianity.

But perhaps it’s more important that we reconsider how we talk about sex in the church. For although the church devotes an immense amount of energy to teaching about sexuality — just go to the Christian inspiration section of your nearest Barnes & Noble and compare the number of books about chastity to books that challenge, say, consumerism — many Christians still ‘’struggle with'’ (in that euphemistic evangelical phrase) premarital sex, adultery and pornography.

So why is the church’s approach to teaching chastity falling short? Consider the popular ‘’True Love Waits'’ virginity pledge: ‘’Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.'’

This pledge and others like it are well meaning but deeply flawed. For starters, there’s something disturbing about the assumption that teenagers are passively waiting for their future mates and children, when the New Testament is quite clear that some Christians are called to lifelong celibacy. (Paul, for example, did not have a mate or children, and Dan Brown’s fantasies notwithstanding, Jesus’s only bride was the church.) Chastity is not merely about passive waiting; it is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now.

Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God’s grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.

The pledges are also cast in highly individualistic terms: I promise that I won’t do this or that. As the Methodist bishop William Willimon once wrote: ‘’Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived.'’

During our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a small apartment inside a church. On Tuesdays, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon met downstairs. As I got to know some of the regulars, I began to wonder if there wasn’t something the church could learn from the 12-step groups in our midst.

After all, what are 12-step groups but communities of people expecting transformation? People show up because they want to change, and they know that making a promise by themselves — I will stop drinking — won’t cut it. Alcoholics Anonymous explicitly recognizes that transformation works best when a community comes alongside you and participates in your transformation.

Christians, like 12-step group attendees, are people who are committed to becoming, to use the Apostle Paul’s phrase, new creatures. Living sexual lives that comport with the Gospel is one part of that.

Perhaps pledges for chastity need to be made not only by the individual teenager. Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager’s whole Christian community: we pledge to support you in this difficult, countercultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don’t have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God’s forgiveness to you if you falter. No retooled pledge will guarantee teenagers’ chastity, but words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits.

Keeping a Pledge
Grace, Transformation, and Community

Chuck Colson

July 5, 2006

I read the New York Times every day. But I can’t remember the last time I found profound theological wisdom in its columns—that is until recently.

Lauren Winner, an insightful new voice among Christian writers, graced the New York Times op-ed pages with a straight-talking explanation of Harvard’s recent studies showing that abstinence pledges have proven ineffectual among teenagers. According to Winner, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Now before getting defensive, listen to her well-grounded theological explanation: “Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God’s grace.”

This is no less than the apostle Paul teaches us in Romans 7. Winner further proposes, “Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.” She also rightly draws our attention to the brash individualism of such pledges. Quoting Methodist bishop William Willimon, she writes, “Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived.'’

To that I say, “Amen!” Winner re-affirms something that the Church has known but all too often forgotten: true transformation requires God’s enabling grace. And because of the way God created us to reflect the inherent relational nature of the Trinity, transformation happens best within the context of community. I applaud Winner’s nudging reminder that the community of believers must be indeed just that, a community, supporting and enabling that counter-cultural commitment to God’s ways.

Unwittingly, Winner’s argument also point to the lessons we’ve discovered in working in some of the most difficult trenches of transformation—the prisons. Simply more education or a pledge before the parole board won’t help prisoners stay out of prison. True change of will requires God’s enabling grace and power.

And for that change to seep down deep, prisoners need a community of support. They need volunteers who will open up the Word of God and show them how to live, mentors who will come alongside and share their lives, and most of all, they need the open arms of a church community to embrace them and support them when they return.

And this is perhaps what grieves me most about the recent decision from a judge in Iowa, ruling against the faith-based prison program, the InnerChange Freedom Initiative. Shutting down programs like IFI will only succeed in hurting the community, by standing in the way of the only transformation that really works.

The IFI program works because it does exactly what Winner and I’ve talked about. It provides a way for grace-filled transformation to occur in the context of community. In so doing, it is a witness to the Church of what it has too often forgotten, and a witness to the community of the only true power to change.

christian magazine first things ran a nice response to this week’s firing of Robert Smith, a Washington Metro board member, for saying that homosexuals are “sexual deviants” on cable tv. for washington post coverage, click here.

i have two questions:
1) who bothers watching this kind of tv (or any, for that matter… unless it’s the world cup)?
2) what does this irrational intolerance of a traditional religious belief demonstrate about america more generally?

after 50 years of tv, still no-one can acceptably answer the first question. but the second is dealt with well in this response, reproduced from first things (nod to ryan anderson for the heads-up on this). it’s long, but worth the read.

June 21, 2006

A friend emails thoughts on the recent firing of a transportation commissioner in Maryland for remarks about homosexuality:

Back in 2004, Rocco Buttiglione was nominated to be the commissioner of justice on the newly formed European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union. A distinguished political philosopher and a friend and confidante of Pope John Paul II, Buttiglione had a long and admirable career of public service, but various members of the European Parliament objected vehemently to Buttiglione’s views on homosexuality. A Roman Catholic, Buttiglione had said publicly that he believed that homosexual conduct was immoral. He was quick to add that he thought discrimination against individuals with a homosexual orientation was also immoral and indeed illegal under European law, but that made no difference. The committee considering Buttiglione’s candidacy advised against approving him, and when the whole European Parliament, which was to make the final decision, gridlocked on the nomination, Buttiglione withdrew his candidacy.

The lesson many people drew from this incident was that a devout Roman Catholic, or indeed anyone who ascribed to the traditional view in Western civilization that homosexual acts are immoral, was unfit for high office in the European Union. Some people thought, however, that such things could not happen in the United States.

But we live in rapidly changing times. Earlier this week, Robert L. Ehrlich, the Republican governor of Maryland, abruptly removed from office one of his appointees to the board of directors of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), an interstate agency that oversees public transportation in the Washington, D.C., area. The appointee, Robert J. Smith, had been a regular guest on a local cable news show in Maryland, and on the June 9 program, the topics discussed on the show included the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would limit marriage in the United States to unions of one man with one woman. In the course of the discussion, Smith referred to gays and lesbians as “persons of sexual deviancy.” He later reiterated to reporters that he “consider[s] homosexual behavior as deviant” and explained that this view stems from his Roman Catholic faith. To be sure, “deviant” is a harsh word, and Smith would have done better to stick close to the more careful formulations used in Catholic doctrine, but in context it was perfectly clear that Smith was affirming the moral doctrine taught in the Catholic religion and in a dwindling percentage of other Christian denominations.

The response to Smith’s remarks was explosive. In removing Smith from office, Governor Ehrlich said, “Robert Smith’s comments were highly inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable. They are in direct conflict to my administration’s commitment to inclusiveness, tolerance and opportunity.” The WMATA chairwoman said that Smith’s remarks reflected “a high level of intolerance” and that she “was surprised that someone who sits as a public official on a board would make that kind of a statement.” One of Smith’s fellow board members, however, said it most succinctly, asserting, “To defend this point of view is beyond the pale.”

That last phrase arrests the attention. What Governor Ehrlich and Smith’s colleagues on the WMATA board were saying is not just that they disagree with Smith about the moral quality of homosexual conduct, not just that Smith’s views are in error, not just that his views are unreasonable, but that they are immoral. Indeed, nothing less would justify Ehrlich’s decision to remove Smith. Ehrlich could hardly admit that Smith’s views were reasonable, the kind of thing that a person may in good faith believe even if Ehrlich himself disagreed, and yet nevertheless justify removing Smith from an office that has no significant connection to gay rights on the basis of those beliefs. No, what is being said here is that Smith’s views on homosexual conduct, which are the views of the Catholic religion and of a great many Americans (both religious and nonreligious), are, in the words of Smith’s former colleague, “beyond the pale”—beyond, that is to say, the range of beliefs that moral people might hold in just the same way that, say, racist beliefs are beyond the pale. Only bigots think that way.

Asked to back up this claim, Governor Ehrlich might have cited the authority of the United States Supreme Court. Back in 1994, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in Romer v. Evans, held that a state constitutional amendment prohibiting the state and its cities and counties from enacting anti-discrimination laws related to homosexual orientation or conduct violated the federal Constitution, because it was “inexplicable by anything but animus toward” gays and lesbians and “lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.” Many have read this case as meaning that, in the view of the Supreme Court, a negative judgment on homosexual conduct or orientation lacks any rational basis and so must be the product of irrational animus. Such a reading makes sense of Justice Kennedy’s otherwise not especially coherent opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.

Notice, too, how quickly both Buttiglione and Smith were to refer to their Catholic faith. Supporters of both quickly cast the treatment they received as a form of religious persecution—as if the belief that homosexual conduct is immoral were a peculiarly Catholic, or at least Christian, tenet, and that using that belief to exclude someone from public office would amount to religious discrimination. That may be, but in fact the Catholic Church has always taught that the moral norm against homosexual conduct is not peculiarly Catholic, that it is rather part of natural morality and can be known by reason in natural moral philosophy. In his Laws, for example, Plato argued against such conduct and would have prohibited it, all on the basis of purely philosophical arguments (636a-c, 835c-841e), not religious taboo. But we have reached the point that, at least in disputes conducted in the news media, rational arguments on the merits of this subject are hopeless; only an appeal to a different kind of nondiscrimination norm might work.

The removal of Robert Smith is thus an early-warning sign. Unless things change in ways now quite unforeseeable, it will not be very long before the principle of traditional Western morality that homosexual conduct is immoral will be contrary to the public policy of the United States. As this new public policy takes hold, it will filter through the law and society just as other anti-discrimination norms have. Adherence to the new policy will be a de facto requirement for holding public office, and, as private entities adopt the policy as they have other anti-discrimination norms, people adhering to the traditional moral view will become unfit to serve as directors of public corporations, as officers of professional associations, as union officials, and as university professors. Organizations that do not ascribe to the policy may lose government licenses necessary to carry on their business, become ineligible to receive grants and subsidies, and be disqualified from bidding on government and other contracts. Catholic Charities in Boston recently had to cease arranging adoptions because Massachusetts required that it not discriminate against same-sex married couples in placing children. Organizations not ascribing to the new policy may even lose tax-free status under the Internal Revenue Code to which they would otherwise be entitled. This happened to Bob Jones University because of its racist policies; there is no reason why, a few years hence, the same thing could not happen to Notre Dame because of what will be called its homophobic policies.

Many people will say that this is alarmist nonsense. Perhaps so, but in the long history of the world, human beings have shown themselves highly intolerant of those who disagree with them about their cherished moral beliefs. The Puritans, for example, came to the New World seeking religious freedom, gained power in Massachusetts (ironically, the same state that now gives us same-sex marriage), and promptly began persecuting those who dissented from their orthodoxy. Even among those who preach toleration most loudly, genuine toleration is often scarce once the power to be intolerant has been gained. One of the many wonders of the American experiment is that the American people, throughout most of our history and with some shameful exceptions, have been astonishingly tolerant even of those who disagreed most flagrantly with the majority’s values. There is no guarantee, however, that such generous toleration will continue.

Indeed, there is some reason to think it may not. For the Americans who have been so tolerant over the past two centuries have been for the most part deeply committed to a particular set of moral and religious values largely derived from Protestant Christianity. But as political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio wrote in First Things, during the last thirty years, self-consciously nonreligious people have emerged as potent actors on the political stage promoting an overarching secular worldview.

This worldview evolved organically out of the American experience, of course, and the people who uphold it are sincere advocates of various forms of tolerance. But they are also generally inclined to believe that the traditional view that homosexual conduct is immoral is the product of the irrational animus of which Justice Kennedy spoke. More to the point, such people have never yet, as a class, held sufficient political power to be intolerant of those who dissent from the core values of their worldview. As such, they are still untested, and it remains to be seen whether, should they come to achieve majority power, they will be as tolerant of traditionally religious Americans as traditionally religious Americans long were of them.

Perhaps they will, for many such people are clearly persons of genuine goodwill, but the general experience of human nature down the centuries does not encourage optimism, and if things end as they are now beginning, those who accept the traditional norms may well end up the moral equivalent of Klansmen.

a reflection on oppressive policy by a 60s poet.

Stupid America

stupid america, see that chicano
with a big knife
in his steady hand
he doesn’t want to knife you
he wants to sit on a bench
and carve christfigures
but you won’t let him.

stupid america, see that chicano
shouting curses on the street
he is a poet
without paper and pencil
and since he cannot write
he will explode.

stupid america, remember that chicanito
flunking math and english
he is the picasso
of your western states
but he will die
with one thousand masterpieces
hanging only from his mind.

Abelardo “Lalo” Barrientos Delgado, 1969