Rant On Proposition 8

At the same time as the presidential election, the state of California voted on Proposition 8 – whether or not to amend the state constitution by adding, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Doing so passed.

Now I recognize that this issue is quite contentious in my native Christian circles. The widely-respected Focus on the Family, (though even writing the name makes me cringe) using language like states being “vulnerable to pro-homosexual forces” and warning us that “the Senate in 1996 came within a single vote of passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have wreaked havoc on American culture. This legislation would have made sexual orientation a protected class equivalent to racial minorities under federal civil rights laws.” That made me feel quite enraged, Mr. Dobson, if that’s what you want, but somehow not at the “homosexual activists”.

This reddit comment made a better point, but still not quite where I would place my views:

I am an evangelical Christian … Personally, I do believe that the practice of homosexuality is morally wrong. I also believe most abortions are wrong. At the same time, I do not believe that it is the government’s prerogative to legislate on these matters except insofar as there are scientific or otherwise objective (i.e. not moral or religious) grounds for said legislation. If demonstrable harm to society results from a certain practice, generally that’s a good reason to restrict or outlaw it. Until that is shown, however, I will not speak against the government recognizing civil unions between people regardless of what I believe the moral status of that union is. Marriage is indeed a religious institution and I believe that the government’s choice to recognize that institution as having civil ramifications is a good one. Who am I, and for that matter, who are religious organizations in general, to say that the government cannot or should not also recognize other unions in the same way?

However, I question this person’s assumptions that (1) the government acts, or ought to act objectively, and (2) the domain of religious organizations stops where government begins.

Rather, some observations:

• There are many generally accepted laws that fall short of enforcing Christian “values”. For instance, it is not illegal to conceive a child out of wedlock, although most Christians I know would say doing so is immoral.
• There is no one set of “values” that all Christians hold. For instance, according to the Pew Forum, even on the hot-button issue of abortion, 24% of evangelicals say abortion should be “legal in most cases”.
• I wish to challenge the concept of “values” altogether. I would define such as moral conclusions. Would not the route taken be of more interest? I also have a huge amount of pent-up distaste at groups such as those lead by Dobson, which use the concept to make it morally unacceptable to disagree.

I thus am not afraid to say I would have voted against Proposition 8, had I been a Californian.

My original train of thought would be that marraige ought to lie outside the state’s domain. However, there are things that only the state can provide that are beneficial to married life, such as visitation rights in hospitals.

Rather, I think that since the state needs to get involved, it ought not to care who marries. I pay taxes, regardless of whether I am Christian, Muslim or Hindu. I am allowed to use the roads, regardless of my gender or sexual orientation. In the same vein, if the marriage must be a state “service” (for lack of better word), it ought to be disinterested in who I am.

Also, I see no pragmatic reason the state should care. I don’t feel allowing homosexuals to marry would endanger marriage at all, especially in light that divorce is legal and common, even in evangelical circles, (13% are divorced, not including those who have remarried, according to the Pew Forum) which is by all accounts, incredibly destructive. Should I ever get married, (cue Ryan: ha ha-ha ha) I would find divorce much more “devaluing” (if indeed I was to care) than allowing a gay person to visit their partner when they are about to die.

Perhaps if people wanted something worthwhile to complain about, officially changing the spelling of “marriage” would help a lot more.

Something that annoyed me today

Over near where I live, there has been a national news story about a missing 15-year-old named Brandon Crisp. Apparently he ran away after a spat about his Xbox, which caused Microsoft to post reward money for his whereabouts. Despite very thorough searching, he managed to elude discovery. (though apparently unintentionally) The public around here has been very involved with the story.

Anyhow, today he was found dead. This has been given great weight in news coverage, and it disturbed many people considerably after it was told at school. There seems to be a sense of great tragedy attached to this whole incident, especially now as it has ended, in the words of the media, “in the worst way possible.”

In nearly unrelated news, about a month ago, buried among the rest of the inane and asinine States election coverage was this – where now President-elect Obama promised that “we will kill Bin Laden” during one of the debates, designed to woo voters.

So my question now is, what should make one person’s death such a tragedy as to make people related only by proximity tear up, while another’s would be celebrated?

I think that we have a perception that a runaway teenager is innocent, and victimized by their own poor decisions or context; on the other hand, we see bin-Laden as deserving of death because he is a terrorist.

As badly as this may come across, I do not think that this distinction is justified. Bin Laden, no matter what he may have orchestrated, isn’t any more deserving of death than someone perceived as an young, innocent victim of circumstance.

However, if there are any news stories at all about communities in mourning over bin Laden’s death, if he is caught and inevitably then executed, I shall be surprised to the utmost.

On Writing, Speech, and Meaning

I have been reading some articles on the relation of writing and speech of late. One concept seemed especially interesting/relevant.

• “arbitrariness of the sign” and arche-writing: written words don’t necessarily reference anything. If we try to trace what words mean, we need to use other words, so we never arrive at a definitive referent to a word. On a deeper level, this concerns the fundamental disconnect between subjective experiences in different subjects. This is discussed mostly by Derrida.

However, I find this doesn’t apply to speech. When speech is used, there is no concern that words have no referent, as the context of speech is always accessible, as it is imminent. If I am speaking, I can if necessary, produce physical examples of what I am talking about, if appropriate, and resolve ambiguities of that kind. I am accessible for my audience to ask me questions and clarify what I am talking about.

I see this happens because there is an overlap of context for the speaker and audience. The speaker is bringing their unique subjective experience, and communicating it into the context that the speaker and audience share. This doesn’t happen in writing because the audience’s exact context is inaccessible for the author, as the work can be given to groups with no relation to the text’s original intended audience.

So then it can be said that the relationship of the speaker and audience, by sharing their immediate context (at the very least), is what guarantees meaning to the words spoken.

I believe this can be exploited in literary interpretation to guarantee its meaning also, and I see this as already being done. By understanding the author’s context, the relationship established by such is re-established, is brought back alive, and meaning is given to the otherwise arbitrary, unresolvable symbols of writing.

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In a broader sense, I am seeing that:

• Subjectivity brings isolation
• For there to be meaning, this isolation must be defeated.
• Thus, subjectivity needs to die.
• This is not possible because (1) the subjective can’t just go away, and (2) we can only interface with the world through senses, which are inherently subjective.
• Another solution is to merge the subjectives of multiple people.
• It is thus in this sort of relationship that meaning is derived.

I have also found the two senses of ‘meaning’ to be very related:

• Meaning as in a referent to text in reality
• Meaning as in rationale for life (referent to metanarrative of reality)

This is evident especially in fields like Biblical hermeneutics, as such texts seek to explain the metanarrative while being texts themselves.

On Truth

At the most basic level, I think truth describes how a statement relates to reality. This has the basic assumption that reality can be known somehow, as the concept of truth is unnecessary and worthless otherwise. However, it is just as evident that reality is a difficult thing to grasp. Kant noticed that the “thing-in-itself” isn’t accessible to us except through our senses, and I am inclined to agree with him. This makes discerning what is true or not with the preceding definition rather difficult, as we can’t even know if our senses correspond at all to reality. Again, I assume that our senses are at least somewhat accurate, as a concept of truth is meaningless otherwise.

There are different senses of the word “truth”. I am less concerned here with logical truth as that which relates to belief. Asserting “Socrates is a man” may have a truth-value, but likely doesn’t concern anyone’s belief system much. These are related closely, but logical truth concerns epistemology, not my focus here of religion-type belief.

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I would like to propose that these sort of truths can be classified into two categories, depending on whether they can be verified personally or not. For instance, I can verify, to a reasonable degree, “All people die”, even without much effort. If I was a bit more evil, I could make even more certain. However, it is impossible to verify a statement like “there is an afterlife”, and still be able to contribute to the literature.

I would also propose that statements of religious truth come in coherent systems, rather than being scattered all over reality. It is rather useless if I hold, as a fundamental truth, “the sky is blue”, unless I believe other things that pertain, for instance, to the origin or nature of the sky which makes it so; truth isn’t valuable except as part of this sort of system. Such a thing has been called a ‘world-view’.

Because isolated truths aren’t worthwhile, truths are considered together in these world-views. Religions are comprised of coherent world-views containing many co-dependant truth-claims. While it is possible to adopt for oneself only part of one of these, any religion wanting to convince anyone of its truth-claims must show that it is thoroughly true, with both its verifiable and non-verifiable parts.

For instance, I don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Before I would accept the FSM’s truth-claim that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world, which is non-verifiable, I would need a good reason as to how the Flying Spaghetti Monster predated the invention of spaghetti. Because I am unconvinced when I can verify its truth-claim, I find no reason to believe it about that which I cannot be certain of.

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The most applicable application(!) of this for me is Christianity. Christianity makes a number of truth-claims, often what I feel is too many, and believing that Christian truth is worthwhile and beneficial for everyone, I would like to see a Christian truth-claim that is convincing.

However, I think my own argument needs to be undermined when discussing Christian truth. I would like to argue the (admittedly speculative) point that Christians can’t claim truth in these sense at all.

Claiming that one has ‘the truth’ is incredibly strong, and I firstly don’t think anyone can say this rightfully, and secondly think it more of a claim to superiority. I see it as an assertion my judgment is innately superior than yours, as you have chosen wrongly whereas I have not. Whatever I experienced to arrive at my conclusion is more important than however you got to yours.

I believe such claims can rather only rightfully be made by God himself.

One could object that since we have the Bible, given by God, we have The Truth accessible. However, the vast majority of the Bible is not so suitable as a book for quoting The Truth out of – the Bible is not a list of true statements, rules, or anything of the sort. Rather, it is a narrative, both in content and in overarching themes. This article by N.T. Wright (which deals with the related issue of Biblical authority, and is a very good read), put it nicely:

… How, for instance, can the book of Judges, or the book of Acts, be authoritative? It is one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began ‘Once upon a time…’?

I think God, by doing this, is rather relating his experience (if God has something of that sort), that of reality, to us. The truth is God’s, he alone can understand it, and he alone can give any comprehension of it. And going even further, I don’t think we can say truth even exists independent of relationship with God.

Therefore, I don’t think we can say to ourselves, or anyone else, that “I have the truth from God”. Rather, I think we ought to point people to relationship with God to find what knowledge of his truth he gives. However, this is not to say that other people can’t help one listen or interpret it.