Life is Cheap in Norway: C.S. Lewis on the Sentence of Anders Breivik

John Piper has a helpful article dealing with Norway's sentence of a man who killed 77 people to only 21 years in prison.

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/life-is-cheap-in-norway-c-s-lewis-on-the-sentence-of-anders-breivik

Indie Music: Stuff White People Like

"If you want to understand white people, you need to understand indie music. As mentioned before, white people hate anything that’s “mainstream” and are desperate to find things that are more genuine, unique, and reflective of their experiences. Fortunately, they have independent music.

A white person’s iPod (formerly CD collection) is not merely an assemblage of music that they enjoy. It is what defines them as a person. They are always on the lookout for the latest hot band that no one has heard of, so that one day they can hit it just right and be into a band before it is featured in an Apple commercial. To a white person, being a fan of a band before it gets popular is one of the most important things they can do with their life. They can hold it over their friends forever! 

 

...WARNING: Indie music is perhaps the most dangerous subject you can discuss with white people. One false move and you will lose their respect and admiration forever. Here are some general rules:

• Bands that have had their songs in an Apple ad are still marginally acceptable.
• Bands that have had their songs in ads for other companies are not acceptable.
• If you mention a band you like and the other person has heard of it, you lose. They own you. It is essential that you like the most obscure music possible.

Remember, popular artists can turn unpopular in a heartbeat (Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes, the Strokes), so you would be best to stick to the following statements: “I love Arcade Fire” “I still think the Montreal scene is the best in the world” “I would die without Stereogum or Fluxblog”*1; and “Joanna Newsom is maybe the most original artist today.”

Christian Lander, Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions 

Stuff White People Like: Religions Their Parents Don't Belong To

"White people will often say they are “spiritual” but not religious. This usually means that they will believe in any religion that doesn’t involve Jesus. The most popular choices include Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, and, to a lesser extent, Scientology. A few even dip into Islam, but that’s much rarer, since you have to make real sacrifices and actually go to a mosque.

For the most part, white people prefer religions that produce artifacts and furniture that fit into their home or wardrobe. They are also particularly drawn to religions that do not require a lot of commitment or donations. When a white person tells you “I’m a Buddhist/Hindu/Kabbalahist,” the best thing to do is ask how they arrived at their religious decision. The story will likely involve a trip to Thailand or a college class on religion."

--Christian Lander,  Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions 

Gandhi, Nazis, and Bad Advice

"Recall Gandhi's rather distressing counsel to Jews of the Holocaust: they should commit suicide rather than resist Nazi tyranny. Regardless of the moral fiber that supported Gandhi's pacifist convictions, the proper moral response to the Jews--indeed, to any oppressed people--is that of a wise man uttered three millennia ago:

If you faint in the day of adversity,

your strength is small.

Rescue those who are being taken away to death;

hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”

does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,

and will he not repay man according to his work?

(Proverbs 24:10-12 ESV)"

-J. Daryl Charles and Timothy Demy

Is Nuclear Power Safe?

"This kind of argument can be applied to almost anything, since nothing is literally 100% safe. It has been used against medicines, pesticides, nuclear power, automobiles, and many other targets. Where the issue is the safety of nuclear power plants, for example, the answer to the question whether nuclear power is safe is obviously No. If nuclear power were safe, it would be the only safe thing on the face of the earth. This page that you are reading isn't safe. It can catch fire, which can spread and burn down your home, with you in it. The only meaningful question, to those who are spending their own money to deal with their own risks, is whether it is worth what it would cost to fireproof every page in every book, magazine, or newspaper.

In the case of nuclear power, the question of safety, in addition to cost, is Compared to what? Compared to generating electricity with hydroelectric dams or the burning of fossil fuels or compared to reducing our use of electricity with dimmer lights or foregoing the use of many things that are run by electricity and taking our chances on alternative power sources? Once the discussion changes to a discussion of incremental trade-offs, then nuclear power becomes one of the safest options. But neither it nor anything else is categorically safe."

--Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One 

Liberal Scholarship and Making Oneself God

As a hardcore Protestant, I don't often quote the Pope on this blog, but love rejoices with the truth regardless of where that truth is found. So I will give the truth its due.

"The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history--that everything to do with God is to  be relegated to the domain of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, now we alone speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism. He wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times...The dispute about interpretation is ultimately a dispute about who God is...

We are dealing here with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God, and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening, by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God., And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too."

--Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth (2007 A.D.)

One Does Not Cease to be a Moral Being When One Takes Up Arms

"In the present age, war will never be eradicated; thus, the just-war tradition avoids the utopian error of thinking--or hoping--that war might be abolished. It reckons with the stubborn reality of human nature and human fallenness, which is not only the normative teaching of historic Christian theology, but the empirical evidence on display in all of human civilization. In this way, basic human discernment and just-war moral reasoning acknowledge that, where the lamb and the lion are presumed to lie together in the present age, the lamb will  need constant replacement."

"The just-war tradition maintains the moral distinction between guilt and innocence, between combatant and non-combatant, between involuntary manslaughter and murder--distinctions that are rooted in Scriptural teaching and the natural law. Much contemporary pacifism  is grounded in a basic horror and revulsion at the notion of violence and bloodshed. While these are unquestionably horrible, policemen and emergency medical technicians, to their credit, voluntarily engage horror and bloodshed as a public service every day as part of their normal work. Violence and bloodshed, hence, are not the worst of evils. The worse evil is not to engage social-moral evil when it manifests itself and innocent people are its victims. Properly speaking just-war theory sanctions neither an illicit peace nor unqualified violence; rather, it places both on trial,as it were, requiring that force be motivated by charity and utilized in the service of justice. One does not cease to be a moral being when one takes up arms. Any policeman, regardless of his political preferences, will verify this truth."

--J. Daryl Charles and Timothy Demy

Thoughts on Just-War, Part 1

I am back from a long hiatus--I am getting married, after all, and engagement is a busy time. But when being engaged, there's nothing like reading a book on just-war theory, which is what I am currently doing (don't worry, it's only a few pages a day). So I'll likely be sharing some quotes from it.

"The just-war position is made necessary by the fact that we live in the period of the 'already but not yet,' that is, in the temporal period that is characterized by human fallenness and penultimate peace. Like the pacifist, the just warrior is committed to 'putting violence on trial,' in the words of one theorist; and like the pacifist, he will also evaluate life from the perspective of those who suffer and those who are potential victims. At the same time, unlike the pacifist, he will highly qualify peace and find deficient the world's definition of peace, fully aware that some forms of "peace" are oppressive, totalitarian, and therefore unjust."

"Justice without force is a myth, because there are always evil men, and evil men must be hindered. Thus, reasoned political judgments are a necessary reality, which on occasion will require the application of coercive force. And why? Because the very goods of human flourishing are at stake--goods that need protecting." 

--J. Daryl Charles and Timothy J. Demy, War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective

 http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Christianity-Questions-Perspective/dp/1433513838/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344914871&sr=1-3&keywords=j.+daryl+charles