All religions are one.

One of the arguments of the emerging church is that structurally we have to recognize the fragmentation of society after globalization, which means that ideologically we cannot believe otherwise than by adopting the postmodernism's (a word which is always to be distinguished from "postmodernity's") conception of truth as constructed and pluralistic. A common source for this argument is the plurality of religious beliefs which seem so diverse and incompatible that they could have no common ground at all.

I was reading about Amida Buddhism, which is still one of the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan. We don't know much about it in the West because the experts who provide the curriculum for our comparative religions courses find it too similar to Protestantism to be of any interest without seeing that it is precisely its great similarity to Western Protestantism that makes it so interesting.

A summary of my research: Amidism (also known as Jodo Shin or "Pure Land" Buddhism) may find its roots in the third and fourth century after Christ in the area of northwestern India. Amidism is oart of the larger tradition of Mahayana Buddhism and embraces Mahayana distinctives as opposed to the more philosophical Theravada school of Buddhism, which include the belief that Sidhartha was only one of many enlightened ones and that all of them participate in a universal Buddha Nature which is absolutely prior to all of them.

According to Amidism, the Buddha Amida (Amida Butsu) is one of such. The story about him is that he made a vow not to enter into enlightenment until he had accrued enough merit through ascetic discipline to obtain enlightenment not only for himself but for others. According to the story, Amida did obtain enlightenment under such a vow and so the observant who is not able to aspire to enlightment on his own ability may still obtain it just by conscientiously reaffirming in faith ten times "Namu Amida Butsu" -- "Glory to Amida Buddha!". By doing so the observant receives the excess merit accrued by Amida and is able to enter enlightenment based on that.

The basic insight is that the rigorous path to enlightenment is only possible for the few. According to most peoples' own self-assessments, they do not have what it takes to achieve the denial of the ego that is necessary for it. If that is all there is they have no reasonable hope except to rely on the merit of another. Further, Amida is cast in a personal way (supposedly borrowed from some Chinese Taoist sects) and enlightenment is depicted as a "pure land", greatest conceivable land where the water is always clean and the fruit is always fresh and abundant, etc. The idea is that with the use of such imagery, the concept of enlightenment is easier to grasp and the poor, having set aside the insecurity of ever acheiving Nirvana, may make whatever efforts they may toward it rather than despair. Many of the Mahayana buddhas are "bodhifications" of regional deities. It is thought that Amida is the buddha counterpart to Ahura Mazda from Zoroastrianism, having come from that region of the world. In other words, the roots of Amidism are thought to be from the apocalyptic religious traditions peculiar to the Middle East.

Several things strike the evangelical reader when hearing the story of Amida Butsu. First, the tendency of the religion to raise to Augustinian degrees about the individuals ability to deny self. The number of the poor tends to expand to include all people, no matter who much some may protest there self-sufficiency. Second, the need for grace in order to be delivered from this condition. Third that this grace is the result of another's sacrifice and the transfer of there accomplished observance to the believer's credit. Fourth, that the this can only be accomplished be faith -- the nambutsu formula cannot be recited to effective, it must be prayed. Fifth, the provider of this merit is one who is a man but also the universal Buddha. Sixth, that the basis for the transfer of this merit is a vow (a covenant) made by the one in question in behalf of others. Seventh, that unlike Buddhism in general, the basis of this story is not reason reasoning from its own resources. We need to told that this vow was made by the testimony of tradition. (In other words, Amidism is an apocalyptic faith.) Eighth, Amidism promises a personal future after death in the figure of a Pure Land to which the enlightened will go -- a land not so corrupted that enlightenment is only possible for the few if possible at all. In other words, Amidism is an eschatological faith. Finally, a characteristic internal foe of Amidism in the household of Mahayana Buddhism is Zen, which promises nothing but what a person may discover for themselves through their own hard work and rejects the "over-mythologizing" of the Pure Land school. (Think of the debate between Augustinianism and Pelagianism in Christianity.)

It seems clear that the logic and rational motivations for the doctrines of Amidism is essentially the same as that for the doctrines of Protestantism. One might suspect that at least the truth conditions for both are different. But one remembers that religious language is often language not about the essence of the religious object (which being infinite is beyond our ability to comprehend much less state in an essential definition) but about the various roles fulfilled by the religious object. "Creator", "Father", "Son", "Redeemer", "Christ", "Lord", "Savior", etc. are all role-realizer words. "The Creator of the world" is "The X such that X creates the world", which is something we can know to true based on revelation and/or reason, but which tells us nothing about what X is.

In the case of the OT saints, they put their faith in the promise of a future Messiah and they did so successfully without knowing that the Messiah would be Jesus. They believed in an X such that X would bring about the Kingdom of God, a function depicted and characterized by the revealed rituals of the OT economy. We now know that the Messiah, that the X in question is Jesus.

If Amida is defined as "The name we give to the X such that X performs the role characterized by fulfilling the pure land vow legend with sufficient proximity", then for all we know "Amida" is just another name for Jesus and the faith of the Amidist is faith in Jesus in a similar sense to the OT saint's faith in Jesus. It remains an empirical question whether a teacher in good standing with the Amidist community would understand his doctrine in this way. Without being able to say for certain whether this is the case, it seems the right attitude about the sufficiency of Amida faith on the part of the Christian must be agnosticism. On the best view, it seems that Amidism is a kind of proto-evangelion. However, the likely response of an Amidist to the Christian Gospel is not to see it as the fulfillment of Amidism but rather as something that the Amidist has no felt need to adopt. This may partially explain why after so many centuries of witness, Christianity has had no significant following in Japan where the Pure Land School has such a great following. As Christian missionaries, we would most fairly expect to win them by saying "We see that you are very religious" and "What you worship in ignorance we want to make plain to you". The most likely response is "We would like to hear more of this matter" rather than scoffing or believing. If we trace this dialectic through to this result we certainly would have accomplished the kerygmatic dimension of mission.

As this example suggests, in the case of Amidism, here we have a religion well within the larger tradition of a great world religion that is significantly similar in content to our chosen faith. Further, in that larger tradition, Amidism has rival sects that answer the fundamental questions differently than Amidism (like Zen about the importance of help from others vs. only helping yourself). Finally, while evangelicals tend to only identify Christianity with Protestantism, Protestantism makes sense only in a broader sphere of distinctive religious discourse that includes alternatives like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy is more overtly Pelagian than the Augustinian Protestant (and not surprisingly more invested in spiritual exercises and meditation). So it sounds like you have something like this analogy:

Protestantism : Eastern Orthodoxy :: Amidism : Zen

Now it seems that what's true in this case about the relation between these views on the question of grace and responsibility is true actually or potentially of all religions and divisions of religions about all issues. All religions are one in that they wrestle with a certain set of particularly religious aporias even though they make alternative judgments about how to answer them. For any religious debate in any religious tradition, there is actually or potentially (that is, all the concepts are available in the religion to express the question not yet considered) counterpart debates in any other religious tradition. Given that the counterpart relation is one content, this means that every religion has a potential access point for making sense of any other religion, at least doctrinally.

Thus all religions have a unity that makes them potentially accessible to each other and which makes there religious claims evaluable by one another in terms of what is finally considered to be the best answer to each of the aporias all religions face (Some examples of such aporias; sovereignty vs responsibility, law vs grace, infinite vs personal, transcendence vs immanence, faith vs. works, one vs. many, atonement vs holiness, Being vs. Becoming, eternal vs. temporal, etc.) This contradicts the postmodernist account that sees all religious traditions as incommensurable and thus not available to rational discussion. As I hope to have illustrated, this view does not do justice to the phenomenology of religion.

One possible objection to this is the fact that in spite of the similarities between Amida and Protestantism, Amidism is still presupposing a general Buddhist metaphysic of Nothingness and the "no-self" which is clearly incompatible with Christianity. The reply is yes but this does not refute the possibility of internalizing the debate between Infinite Perfect Being vs. Nothingness within both Christianity and Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism already contains theistic elements and in the west we did see at least one theologian, Thomas Altizer, defend what he called "Christian Atheism". We would not necessarily accept such innovations but that does not mean we cannot discuss them.

Quasi-public Comic Books.

A couple of events this week forced me to come to grips with a dilemma. One was the casual observation from a fellow professor that all pop culture must be avoided because it dumbs down the mind and undoes progress. Another was discovering a book on the current scene in comic books by an author who didn't quite get his doctorate. i won't say anything more about that since i only glanced through the work and cannot meaningfully discuss it.

Both event though helped me diagnose a condition I was suffering from. I was reintroduced late in life to comic books by a successful doctoral student who disclosed some the the high minded themes in today's current writers. That being the case, although I could clearly recognize the sophistication in current comic writers, I eventually became weary or the apparent retreading of views and opinions subtly expressed in them that just did not resonate with me. For me the popularity of Japanese manga was a great alternative because their comics were actually fun to read. However, it was palpable that they were not doing much for me intellectually and that the reiteration of the same old devices was making the novelty wear off fast. I liked manga when it reflected on the unique features of Japanese culture. Now I can see that even the Japanese have a criticism of their own culture which shows that it is toxic. so it is hard to be excited about it anymore.

Now I see the problem. Japanese comics are pop culture and American comics are not. Let the generalization pass for the moment. More importantly, what's going on in most American comics that are made by 'Big Comics' (as in 'Big Business', 'Big Media', and 'Big Science') are featuring a certain elite body of writers (setting aside the artists for the time being) who are all very distinguished not only in comics but also in publishing, screen writing, and/or television writing, Hollywood in four color print. These writers are also involved in an ongoing conversation with one another, a conversation that has its roots in reflecting on stories and traditional and contemporary thought. The coterie of comic writers is not unlike the coterie of professors within a discipline, including the aspect of speaking mainly to each other. You might not think so since comics are "for the masses". But the fact is that comics are packaged in way such that they finally result in graphic novels which will only be purchased by the self-styled and sophisticated consumer, one that sees themselves as part of an elite, all geekiness aside.

Much of what comics mainly do in this circle is to affirm, modify, challenge, etc. what the author sees other authors doing and so most comics are really about the state of comics itself, and the development of the direction of comics fits in a rewarding way with the categories and theories of modern literary studies. The comic industry functions like an extension of the literature department of a public university, whether intentionally so or not. Consequently, it is likely to be analyzable in terms of a Kuhnian account of paradigm change or a rhetoric of culture.

Which explains what I don't like about these comics -- their dogmatism and the corresponding discounting of rival comic projects (like Astro City). Gertrude Himmelfarb uses the phrase "quasi-public" to characterize ostensibly private institutions that develop bureaucracies remarkably similar to public institutions due to there dependence on the public sector for resources. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Are Big Comics quasi-public? Big Comics are not dependent on the public treasury for financing. But they are not banking their livelihood on Joe Fanboy's $2.95+ per issue either. They do significantly depend on other things which are quasi-public; Big Universities, Big Art, and Big Media. Consequently there is always the danger that Big Comics will become more like Court Comics. Comics becomes all about genre and not about "pop".

On the other hand, do Big Comics force the hand of the healthy minded consumer who does not want to be dumbed down but who does not fit well with the professionalized paradigm of "good story matter"? Big Comics can always oblige us to listen by their excellent quality (which no one can deny). But equally talented yet contrarian writers may just have to sit and listen and shut up. Maybe we need a blog for comic writers.

Wonderful, Wonderful, Copenhagen!

Here is an excellent "First Things" article by a physicist that explains some of the relevant philosophical features of quantum theory in a clear and useful way.

Links to other related articles.

What is the Emergent Church?

(Reposted from my post at Facebook's White Horse Inn group discussion board.)

After looking at some of Brian McClaren's writings, it seems to me that the emergent church movement has some alternative descriptions to it besides its own self-description which would help us appreciate it more than we do. The matter of self-description is very key to what they are all about as they are strategically trying to choose their words in order to be heard by the current phase of secular culture. However, they are also looking to create an opportunity to correct substantial problems in the culture of the church. The general character of these problems are distinctive in that they are not of the strictly theological sort but rather methodological. On the other hand they are still considered substantial because they deal matters of moral appraisal.

In a way, the emergent church movement is part of the story of the evangelical rejection of fundamentalism, which encouraged an open mind to culture and intellectual achievement and thus encouraged young Christians to put off their original in church upbringing and pursue university educations. The emergent church is the blowback from this move, importing academic culture into the culture of the church on the premise that, as expected, university culture had legitimate criticisms to make about the habits of churched communities and the church itself would have to listen in all fairness. Further it must be the case that these admonishments all point to blocks which prevent sophisticated academics from even considering the church. But this does not just become an issue for an elite but for all citizens receiving a college education.

The problem centers on the issue of what counts as critical thinking which the emergent church views from both sides of the church line. Much of classical evangelical apologetic method as given by Carnell, Schaeffer, Henry, CS Lewis, Van Til, Clark, and Hackett is still very much in the objective idealist tradition of philosophy at a time when professional academia has rejected that tradition for positivism. While not committed to logical positivism in its explicit form general features of the positivist view remain standard. For example, while evangelical apologetics had been emphasizing the importance of formulating a coherent world and life view according to some objective criteria of world-view evaluation (empirical fit, coherence, livability, etc.), the academy has come to reject all such activity as "system building" and to focus more on the analysis of concepts, languages, structures, signs, etc.. The only discipline which can make progress on this account is science which can be cashed out in terms of conditional hypotheses and matters of logic. This not only denies a common ground on the basis of explanatory values, the entrenchment of this view in the university is enforced by gatekeepers who maintain it as the main research framework. This basically creates a kind of culture shock but one such that there is no basis in principle of overcoming, especially if you think of culture shock as a form of shame created by the removal of cultural fig leaves in the eyes of other cultures.

As Christians have gone through the university regimen they have become more savvy about where the university culture is most vulnerable. A good example is Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga altered the agenda of religious philosophy by defending the idea that belief in God could conceivably be a belief that needs no evidence to be legitimate. From the point of view of a traditional apologetics this seemed appalling given that Paul so clearly says that creation leaves a clear witness, enough to oblige belief in all people. It seemed that Plantinga's approach fell far short of the potential of theistic evidence according to the Scripture, thus compromising by implication the authority and inerrancy of Scripture.

I'm not sure if Plantinga believes in the inerrancy of Scripture or not, but that doesn't matter. Plantinga's agenda is not determined deductively from Scripture but rather by learning how the contemporary philosophy game is played and addressing it's weaknesses strategically. It is enough that it is logically conceivable that a person may have belief in God at the foundation of his justification tree, whether one actually does or not. Such a possibility refutes the putative obligation to proportion all beliefs to empirical facts, a tacit restriction of what may count as good thinking. By making such a point Plantinga is raising an internal criticism about the rules of the game, which is a legitimate move. His dialectical strategy is such that the average church goer may have a hard time seeing what he is up to and may in fact think that Plantinga is giving away the store. But this is only because he does not have the wherewithal to see things from Plantinga's point of view.

Plantinga's strategy is an excellent example of the "David and Goliath" approach -- taking out the most intimidating of Giants with the most meager looking of weapons. In turns out that the most vulnerable spots are only susceptible to the simplest weapons.

If we generalize this case, we can see what the problem is. Imagine the evangelical of the 1970's becoming a parent and sending his child to college not just with the intention of getting a career but in order make a real application of bring all of life under the Lordship of Christ. But after four years, the child has returned home an agnostic having found no leveredge for the evangelical theology he learned to make an impact into his university experience and having to choose between "all truth" and "God's truth". This because he has only learned how he was supposed to think and not how to think simpliciter which is a skill not automatically nor widely possessed by the population, Christian or otherwise. Now if he were to stick with the university and was not afraid of how he would sound to the folks back home he would eventually find the way to hold his faith and learning together as he grew in his abilities. But his doing so would leave the home church unchanged and recreating the drama for each new college student. The church may eventually regret adopting the positive cultural outlook of evangelicalism and retreat back to fundamentalism and isolation.

Hence the program of the emergent church movement which is the radical program of reinventing local church culture to bring it up to speed with the forces pushing from the top down that are isolating it in spite of the churches best intentions. The emergent church uses the language of our "postmodern situation" to communicate its agenda according to its aims. More specificly, it is incorporating the David and Goliath strategy, moving away from overt emphases on truth, argument, and evidence for the more thin looking issues of plausibility and narrative. In spite of the term "postmodern culture" the emergent church is really trying to acclimate the church more to intensified modernity in a way that maintains the essential character of the church more effectively.

The mandate for an emergent church is thus not a call to revival or reformation nor is it a mandate for psychotherapy or church growth techniques. It's a renegotiation of the territory within and between the church and the world. By calling it an emergent church it forces the choice for local Christians between the Old Way of doing things and the New Retrofitted Way of doing things while making the New Way strategically geared to respond to the press of modern quasi-public culture that is driven by the university. In this sense the emergent church is helping the average Christian who cannot see what is going on to be already acclimated to it and thus able to adapt to it.

In conclusion, the emergent church is the offspring of the evangelical movement in the respects that this movement distinguished itself from Fundamentalism. In many ways, the emergent church is being true to the spirit of J. Gresham Machen and Francis Schaeffer if we could only see the big picture. But there are many in the church who cannot do this. In this respect, in which everything comes down to differences with respect to critical thinking, inequalities of ability are unavoidable. The emergent church movement has put aside universal education of all and has adopted the strategy of thinking with the learned and speaking differently to the vulgar.

Just a Reminder

Pancho: !Hey Cisco! !Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo!

Cisco: !Carumba! ?You know what that means don't you, amigo?

Pancho: !Si! That means that tomorrow is . . .

Pancho y Cisco: !! FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!

Cisco: Say, Pancho. ?Do you think they'll have any Tijuana Bibles?

Pancho: Only the ones los hermanos Hernandez write.

Cisco: !Oh, Pancho!

Pancho: !Oh, Cisco!

Miller vs. Millar

After the wretchedness of Marvel's non-excelsior unsaga "Civil War" starring Mark Millar as Captain America ("Heaven knows we need more statesmen!", to quote Bloom County), and just when you thought the Dark Age of Comics entailed dark mindedness, Frank Miller comes out as being on the same page as Dennis Miller with respect to national security.

Brad Melzer ruined the contemporary comics scene for the whole professional American comic book industry. He produced a story line for DC which displayed a character building scenario showing how otherwise well minded people can come to be at odds over dilemmas that are only faced by superheroes -- part of an intelligently crafted and surprising mystery for the DC specific universe. Unfortunately, he may have set the bar too high, since the Infinity Crisis never quite rose to the standards set by its prequel.

Enter Marvel with its own universe redefining story featuring its traditional focus on 3-D character development, or so we all thought. Unfortunately what looked like another deep exploration of how the gods might disagree about a moral dilemma that only they face turned out to be a political diatribe about the administration -- not that there's anything wrong with that except being dumbed down and boring at best and deheroifying previously sainted characters at worst. Rather than producing a conscience stimulating character developing story where the partisans on both sides of the issue are keenly aware of the difficulties and strengths of each option which manifest genuine moral tragedy and crisis, what we got were "heroes" who couldn't rise above the level of partisan jingoism with one time spouting off nativistic libertarian platitudes and the other spouting sycophantic litanies. Finally, when it does end (looking at both the Mark Millar and Peter Jenkins story lines), it becomes a classic piece of rhetoric where even if you were wrong all along you were right and visa versa. ("You can't touch me here.") At least we succeeded in offending -- or at least dissatisfying -- both sides. Finally, Cap is killed off because he has become a square circle for current writers and readers.

Enter Frank Miller, godfather of the Dark Age, with his outspoken views of how 9/11 helped him to close on patriotism, the American flag, and his WWII era parents. Miller, after all, is a Joneser, the lost sociologically category between Baby Boomers and Baby Busters, that have been tending to the social right since they were born. Frank Miller offers the potentially interesting secular insight that "patriotism" is really a species of rational self-interest, potentially solving Cap's false dilemma, something which merits further thought. But Miller still has the cultural memory that impresses one with the fact that secularization needs a theodicy.

Mark Millar, however, is clearly a generation well after WWII, one which is more like the generation prior to WWI, a product of the new quasi-public, not-for-profit sector of banalized good feelings. It is not surprising that the story of Civil War failed to be the advertized challenging tragedy and turned out to be sophistical formula.

I really shouldn't be the one to say this, much as it seems to need saying. But now I can stop because Frank's coming out. I look forward to "Holy Terror, Batman" (review and video clip) when it comes in print. (/rant)

Meanwhile, at the Academy of Star Fleet Command . . .

Slavik: Ah! Cadets Barrac and Samrat.

Barrac: Ah! Slavik! Back from leave on Vulcan?

Slavik: Indeed. It seemed the logical thing to do. But I was puzzled on arrival.

Samrat: Why so? Oh, you must have heard our friend Kirkson was getting washed out.

Slavik: Even so. Was it not the case that Kirkson came into the academy with one of the highest profiles in the institution's history?

Barrac: That's true but he was also a wild card. Because of his abilities his promotion was accelerated and did not go through normal channels. It is possible to miss evidence of unfitness in the early stages.

Slavik: In what sense was he unfit?

Samrat: The official statement was that he was unable to cope with military life. Oh, look! There he is now boarding the departure shuttle. We came to see him off when we bumped into you here.

Barrac: Too bad. Look at the disappointed expression on his face. It's hard for a young man from Earth to give up on a life of adventure.

Slavik: I still don't understand. What happened?

Barrac: Kirkson was not able to complete the interspace technical operations training.

Samrat: In particular, Kirkson was in class with us during the lecture where the operational principles of transporter operation were explained. You know that lecture?

Slavik: Of course. Vulcans had discovered transporter principles on there own before they adopted federation models. The transporter was considered by Surak to greatly facilitate logical enlightenment -- the one technology that he never criticized. So this must have been the lecture where it was explained that what a transporter actually does is bit map a laser simulacrum of the functional structure of the object and its current state, while the matter synthesizer de-atomizes the object mapped and re-synthesizes a counter part object from ambient particles at the desired location according to the map. Not much different from starship food processors.

Barrac: That's the one - the one where they demonstrate the process by a short, in-class, transporter jump where two senior cadets start by playing a game of chess, stop in the middle, get in the transporter, get beamed to the other transporter, and pick up their game exactly where they left off.

Samrat: Except the lecturer also mentioned the "Zombification Legend".

Slavik: Oh, yes! The legend that since all that is preserved is the functional state of the person prior to entering the transporter, it may be that the person after leaving the transporter could function and behave as before but without conscious experiences.

Barrac: Yes, as if the person is perpetually sleep walking.

Samrat: Or even making the person cease to exist altogether while the body just becomes a highly realistic zombie. Of course, it's called a legend because we would have no way of telling the difference.

Barrac: Of course, that seems highly unlikely given that we already have conscious experiences before we go in a transporter in this universe.

Samrat: And we still have them after!

Barrac: We do?

Samrat: Don't you? My, that is distinctly bright shade of red in your uniform!

Barrac: Thanks! I'm trying a new detergent wave for clothes maintenance. By the way, check out Ensign Mitchell over there.

Samrat: Gorgeous! I wish they would go back to the official miniskirt uniform. Zing!

Slavik: Humans!

Barrac: Disgusted?

Slavik: Of course not. And of course, all this is beside the point.

Samrat and Barrac: Hahahahahahaha!

Slavik: Humor. It is a difficult concept.

Samrat: Anyway, it turns out that Kirkson could not dismiss the "zombification" possibility and he refused to go in the transporter even once.

Slavik: Now I see. Fascinating.

Barrac: The academy adviser said that this still happens from time to time. They will re-assign him to civilian duties but he cannot be a Starfleet officer. He will probably be assigned to a research position.

Slavik: What a loss to Starfleet.

Barrac: Isn't it? (Begins to snicker.)

Samrat: It sure is. (Both snicker out of control.)

Slavik: What is it?

Samrat: Mmmmff! Well, what can I say? The joke's on Kirkson.

Barrac: Right! Last night we invited him to a "going away" party, got him passed out on black market Romulan ale, and beamed him through the lecture room transporter anyway.

Samrat: That was my idea!

Barrac: Look, he's wiping a tear from his eye and waving goodbye to us! How sentimental!

Samrat: I kill me!

Slavik: Humor. It is a difficult concept.

Written Out of the Saga.

Captain America
is dead,
is dead.

Norman Malcolm and Religious Doctrine

Norman Malcolm has a paper offering an analysis of the way we ordinarily use the phrase "I know". Malcolm observes from cases that we often use the phrase "I know" and "I believe" to refer to the same belief/knowledge situation when all of the objective factors are the same. For example if I say that I know that there are cookies in the cookie jar (because I just got back from the cookie jar and saw that there were plenty of cookies there) and you go and look and see the cookies, I would say that I knew it. But if you went and looked and saw that the jar was empty you would say, "No, you only believed it".

Accordingly, our use of the phrase "I know" is inconsistent with any traditional account of epistemology. According to Plato, when a boy understands the proof for a theorem in geometry, such as that given any square another square whose side is the length of the diagonal of the original square will be twice area of the original square, he not only knows it, he knows that he knows it -- that is he can introspectively inspect the proof in his own mind and see that the conclusion must be true. This opposed to the person who excepts the same claim on the authority of Euclid. Such a person might be willing to say that he knows that the claim is true but also be willing to consider it false if he discovered that many other geometricians disagreed. But the person who actually possesses in their mind the proof would think that such rival geometers must somehow be mistaken.

In other words, we say "I know" in different ways. Specifically, there is a strong use and a weak use of "I know". If I say "I know" in the strong way, what I mean is that I am not open to any counter evidence to what I am claiming. If I say "I know" in the weak way, what I mean is that I am open to any counter evidence to what I am claiming. The two uses are logically exclusive of each other. In other words, my use of "I know" tracks with what I am prepared to do.

Malcolm observes that this distinction between the strong and the weak use of "i know" cuts across the traditional distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Their are certain mathematical claims that we would not hesitate to say we know (like 2 + 2 = 4) and think that anyone who doubted it was dysfunctional. But many others (like e^--(pi x i) = 1) which we would be willing to admit a need to recheck our work to be sure we are right). Also while "the sun is 9 x 10^7 miles away" and even "there is a heart in my chest" are things that I could imagine some measure of countering evidence for, according to Malcolm, I could not imagine any possible evidence that would refute "here is a computer" for me. He further argues that for me I could not have an infinite chain of weakly used knowledge claims for any a posteriori claim, so that there must be a posteriori strong knowledge claims somewhere for me.

So traditional epistemology is completely orthogonal the way I use the claim to know and its logical characteristics. Further, even though its true that for some subject S and some proposition p, if S knows that p, then it is true that p, it does not follow that if I claim I know that p that I either know that p or that p is true, for either the strong or the weak use of knowing. So the description of how we use "I know" teaches us nothing about epistemology and whatever is true about epistemology does not effect our use of "I know". Consequently, traditional epistemology is otiose to ordinary language.

But even if Plato is wrong and there is no way of distinguishing knowledge from mere belief by introspection, introspection does distinguish between my use of "I know" strongly or weakly. Once I am aware of the distinction, I can discern and choose which use to make of "I know" and so such uses are conspicuous to me because I control them.

I think such an account has interesting consequences for faith and reason. One of them is on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Consider the case of doubting Thomas. He continues to doubt even the authority of his friends' testimony until he sees Jesus alive for himself. We could imagine Thomas saying "I know that no one ever comes back from the dead" but his consideration of criterion for a genuine appearance of Jesus (feeling the nail and spear prints) suggests that this was "I know" in the weak sense. However, seeing Jesus face to face would have been a paradigm case of what Malcolm calls the strong a posteriori use of "I know" -- "I know Jesus is here". In other words, for Thomas:

(1) I knew (in the weak use) that no one comes back from the dead.
(2) I now know (in the strong use) that Jesus is alive.

are consistent. Whatever might be odd about the claim that someone rose from the dead, there is nothing logically odd about it.

Another use for this discussion is in determining the import of doctrinal subscription. Basil Mitchell uses the example of the French Resistance Leader to illustrate how faith is rational without being specific about what would make it false. He argues that we can meaningfully talk of falsification without specifying before hand what counts as a falsifying instance. Suppose you are in the French Resistance in WWII. In a foxhole you meet a charismatic figure that inspires trust and confidence who claims to be the secret leader of the Resistance. But later you see him leading the Nazis in squashing Resistance fighters. Others may give up on him but your original encounter with encourages you to think that perhaps he is tricking the Nazis to let down their guard. There may be some situation that would really compel you to lose faith in the leader but for now you cannot think of what it would be like. It does not mean that you believe in the Leader no matter what. We can imagine the resistance fighter even saying in this situation that he knows (in a weak use of knowledge) the Leader is fighting for us.

According to CS Lewis, though, there are situations in which we would be reasonable to say that we could not seriously entertain any possibility of doubt in someone. If we are on a ledge on the 100th story of a burning building and the fireman on the rope in front of us is telling us to step off the ledge, even though his direction seems to us to be the height of absurdity, we must not regard that absurdity seriously. In such a situation we could imagine steeling ourselves to action be saying "I know (in the strong use) that I can safely step off the ledge". According to Lewis before we can reasonably say this we must have some evidence for it independently of the situation, but in certain situations obstinacy of belief is appropriate.

Consider these claims:

(3) I know that what God tells me is true.
(4) I know that God is speaking to me here in the Bible.
(5) I know that infralapsarianism is true.

It seems that (3) is an example of a strong a priori use of "I know". Once we know what "God" and "speaks" mean, we can see that its true and in a way that makes it impossible to expect counter evidence. Further, it seems that (4) is an example of a strong a posteriori use of "I know". You might not think so but it seems to me that one could either have an immediate impression of God speaking in the Scriptures (say) in the sense that Malcolm speaks of a strong knowledge claim like "here is a computer", or start by having an encounter with the text that is similar to Mitchell's account of the Resistance Leader but which existential urgency may lead you to strengthen along the lines of CS Lewis' account of belief. In such cases, it seems that (4) is appropriate. But in the case of (5), (note: infralapsarianism is the doctrine that God's decree that there would be a fall of all mankind is logically prior to His decree that some should be elected to salvation) the state of affairs that is the basis of (3) and (4) together leads (if it indeed does) to the acceptance of (5) but it seems that one should only affirm (5) in the weak way rather than the strong way because we may admit the possibility that we may have incorrectly read the text or made a false inference from the textual data. However, Malcolm's account helps us make sense of how it is that we can speak so confidently even in differing conditions of belief formation. I say "I know" in both cases and the logic of saying I know allows this. Further, I could even be aware that saying "I know" in (3) - (5) does not imply that I know or that what I claim to know is true, and yet this would not prevent me from saying (3) - (5) nor would it keep me from being in my rights to say (3) - (5).

Now one way to characterize doctrinal assent is that such an assent is determined by what I am prepared to do and what I am prepared to do can help specify whether I am giving my assent in the intended way or not. Many humanists say that there is no greater bane to thought than holding to doctrines. However, if my holding to a doctrine that p means that I am prepared to say "I know that p" as Malcolm has discussed this, it is difficult to see how that could be a bane to thought. I know (strongly) that doctrine is not a bane to thought.

Further, if someone wants to know if I subscribe to a doctrine and I say "Yes, I know that the doctrine is true", that person can ask whether I am using "I know" strongly or weakly. I say that I can only say that I know that doctrine is true in a weak use, not a strong use. To which the reply might be, "Sorry, but we can only grant membership to those who would say that they know that doctrine is true in a strong way". The difference between the strong and the weak use distinguishes different requirements for assent in the same list of doctrines. Another possibility is that it may not matter which, one must at least claim knowledge in a weak sense.

So when we ask what is intended by the requirement a necessary condition for being a pastor in a Presbyterian denomination is that one subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith, we can ask if that means that pastor candidates must be able and willing to say that they know in a strong way that the contents are true. If we allow the caveat that if at any time the pastor changes their mind about any doctrine, they will notify the denominational authorities for evaluation and possible administrative dismissal, then if that means we are asking the candidate to take seriously the possibility he might be wrong, then we are requiring that the doctrinal acceptance implies a weak use of knowledge, but if we take the caveat to be essentially trivial then we are requiring that the doctrinal acceptance implies a strong use of knowledge. Either way, not all candidates who do hold to the doctrine would be acceptable. Of course, this is a false dilemma because it may be that the caveat takes it to be a possible situation even for those who do hold to the doctrine and claim knowledge of it in the strong way and this because the caveat is aware that even knowledge in the strong sense does not imply truth so that even the one who cannot imagine counter evidence my find the unimaginable thrust upon him. The caveat implies that not all doctrinal departures are within the scope of moral irresponsibility, sometimes a responsible person may have to disagree so its not clear that every doctrinal departure is a failure of character even though that is certainly possible and likely. Also, allowing weak uses of knowledge allows that some of doctrines to be accepted just on the authority of a credible tradition which means that one may accept the standards even if one has not personally worked out every article of them. Finally, since if Malcolm is right that there must be some cases of the strong use of "I know" if there are to be any cases of a weak use of "I know" and since some of those cases may turn out to be doctrines as well like (3) and (4), then the best sense of the caveat seems to be that while one must be prepared to say of any doctrine in the set that "I know", the caveat is indifferent about whether that "I know" is strong or weak.

All that to say that some interpretations of subscription, such as that all the doctrine must all be accepted as known in a strong way and never in a weak way, may be abuses of subscription requirements. On the other hand, to say that what one really is required to accept the system of doctrine in the confessions and not every jot and tittle of it suggests that some of the doctrines are different from the rest and whether or not this difference consists in what certain doctrines must be held strongly whether the rest are held strongly or weakly. But since the system of doctrine whatever it is is distinguished from the evangelical essentials there is a further question about the differences among the privileged system of doctrine. However, this may be a case not of distinguishing between what is strongly held from what is weakly held but between what must be strongly held in order to be accepted as a church member and what must be strongly held in order to be a pastor which would include the former. It also seem that another abuse of subscription would be if the real doctrinal requirements for pastors differed exclusively from those required of members including in the respect of whether they were held strongly or weakly.

Finally, Malcolm's approach sheds some light on how such communities that define themselves doctrinally can be legitimately exclusive. If doctrinal subscription is in part about what we are prepared to say it seems that prima facie it may be related to what we are prepared to do and in the existential sense what we are prepared to be. If a community is devoted to a certain vocation, it may require the right attitude to the presuppositions of that vocation and that attitude may require being prepared to say certain things. And in perpetuation, we may be required to teach what we say we know so anyone who is not in sync with this is an impedance to it. There is a doctrinal aspect to asking a person to either lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Philosophy and Canon

My study on the relation between Scripture and practical wisdom has turned to the threefold division of the OT canon according to Jer. 18.18 into the torah of the priest, the counsel of the wise, and the word of the prophet. The Torah is the five books of Moses, the Prophets are Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah-Lamentations, Ezekiel, and the Twelve, and the Writings are everything else in the OT, particularly the Ezra books, the Psalms, and the wisdom literature. I am especially indebted to Walter Brueggeman's book, "The Creative Word" from Fortress Press.

It is clear that while all scripture is inerrant, there are relations of authority in between these sections of the canon. The Torah is absolutely authoritative,the authority of the prophets is subject to the Torah, and the writings are subject to both of the others. This is seen in the different degrees of care taken in the transmission of the text. Scribes that were nattingly meticulous in copying the Torah took more liberties with the wisdom literature.

The wisdom literature in fact seems to have had to have been "canonified" before they could be canonized. A good example is Ecclesiastes which purports to have been written for the most part by Solomon, identifying himself as the Preacher, at a time when his spiritual status was very much in question -- that is, sometime after his corruption by his wives and the abuses that led into the divided kingdom. He expresses a view that seems at odds with biblical faith which made its canonization difficult. But the book begins with a reference to the Preacher in the third person, and ends with a third person reference to the Preacher along with a general statement about the preacher's speeches as well as a general statement about wisdom. What seems to have happened is that an editor added the more constructive parts -- especially the claim that the sum of the matter is to fear God and obey His commandments -- and this is what makes the book as a whole acceptable in the canon (hence I say that it was canonified in order to be canonizable).

We only need to add that, while the New Testament has not been traditionally classified into such sections the three functions can be seen to be performed in various ways in the New Testament as well.

The wisdom literature is neither the Law of God nor the word of the Lord but rather based on ordinary life experience of the authors in service to the Torah. The purpose of the wisdom lit is to show us how to live life by God's law. Consequently, it is the most humanistic part of the canon. It represents a sanctified humanism and provides a model for our own progress into an adult faith. In the wisdom lit God normifies human understanding within limits and discourages it from becoming either autonomously self-sufficient or despairingly useless.

This is includes speculative matters as well as practical. Consider these three claims about what the Old Testament affirms, along with my verdict on whether such a claim is confirmed or unconfirmed by the OT evidence.

(1) The OT affirms authentic divine predestination. (Confirmed.)

(2) The OT affirms authentic moral responsibility. (Confirmed.)

(3) The OT affirms that authentic divine predestination is compatible with authentic moral responsibility. (Unconfirmed.)

Seeing the careful way God's divine hand is manifest in all parts of the OT canon, the OT clearly affirms divine predestination. Also, it is clear that the OT law holds men authentically responsible. At a first glance, this leads us to expect that it would hold a compatibilist view of the relation between sovereignty and responsibility. But in fact we find no evidence of that and in fact we find a kind of balking at the question in its various forms, especially in the Psalms, Job, and Ecclesiastes. For starters, a compatibilist argument would be quite an elaborate undertaking for the authors of Scripture other than we would expect but it would still not do enough to account for the incompatibilist intuitions people typically have. Rather than deal with the issue, the OT resorts to throwing the whole point back against the Divine voice out of the whirlwind, appealing to the throne rights of God, and/or confronting man with God's incomprehensible mystery. There is a demand for an answer which is never satisfied per se but rather condemned to be inappropriate. And God is choosing to approach the problem this way rather than give us a theory about the relationship between the two.

If we pushed the logic of (1) and (2) with an explicit contradiction of (3), then the Bible would be guilty of asserting an outright contradiction. So the biblical response hovers between fully embracing contradiction and fully satisfying demands for explanation. I think it is relevant that the OT absorbs this hit principally in the wisdom literature, the writings part of the canon. It is clear that the revealed things belong to us, but the secret things belong only to God. It is not forbidden to us to learn what we may about them but we cannot demand that everything make sense before believing. Not everything and a profound lot of things will never make sense to us.

It strikes me then that what the Bible thinks about wisdom comes very close if not exactly getting right the experience of philosophical reflection for the most part. When the philosophy considers the big questions, they invariably run against aporia which never seems to become satisfyingly resolved but which grow deeper ever deeper in undestanding. One can never rise to the level of pure dogmatism about these questions and can never be sure that there is not a further consideration that will refute his best account. Philosophy is a mixture of joy and sorrow, of wisdom gained and lost.

Now the interesting thing is that the Bible frustrates any insistent demand to have all this worked out by God so that this is often used as an objection to its authority. But taking the philosophical experience as a whole, it is clear that not only does the Bible not resist that, but rather it accepts it to the extent it internalizes the whole process into its canon when that process concerns God. And all philosophically interesting questions eventually concern God. This also includes the question of how God could possibly exist (or not exist). This is fitting with the doctrine that God is not a darkness, in which there is no light at all, but rather God is an inapproachable light, to dazzling to be ever taken in all the way but in which we may discern some things at the edges.

Or to quote John Cleese in "Clockwise", "It's not the despair. I can deal with that. It's the hope!"

In Plato's dialogues, Socrates is often described in various metaphors that bring out his mission to show those who think they know that they really don't know as they think and thus realizing their ignorance, they finally have the chance to really seek to understand. In the Apology, Socrates refers to himself as the Gadfly of Athens, irritating the city as if it were a sluggish horse. In the Meno, Socrates is described as a Stingray (or Torpedo Fish) stinging his prey and making them numb, that is making them more unsure of what they dogmatically thought they were sure. In this ministry of awaking people from their dogmatic slumbers, we have the characteristic ideal of western education and enlightenment.

One section of society, that is thought to be in especial need of Socratic therapy are Bible believers who seem to be locked into a dogmatism into which nothing can pry. The limits of this perception can be clearly seen in the function of the OT canon itself.

(A) In the Torah, God is the gadfly of the worldly powers. The Torah is the story of how a God alien to the worldly power and settled establishments of Pharaoh breaks in with greater power in behalf of those voiceless ones who have been unjustly enslaved and who will become a nation that stands in the middle of the crossroads of the world to reveal a different way of life to those passing by.

(B) In the Prophets, God is the gadfly to Israel. The institution of the role of prophet is set up in the Torah itself, in its priestly functions. Out of this the prophets are raised up from the poor in Israel to oppose the Torah experts with the Torah and to recall the kings to justice, speaking in ways that evoke conscientiousness. This function can be seen in Jesus rebuttal to the Pharisees.

(C) In the Writings, God is the stingray to the wise raising difficulties and then leaving them to answer them but not allowing their answers to be established hastily in pride nor allowing wisdom to ultimately despair.

So those scriptures provide the very resources that overcome the ossification of opinion. Fundamentalism is biblical ineptitude. A child-like settled faith in the promises of scripture is compatible an adult struggle with reasoning about nature, so that the Biblical God is more like a Socrates who is killed unjustly rather than a Buddha that we are exhorted to kill.

"Glad to be here!"

A Dialogue

Scene: The edge of the Lake of Fire after the passing of sentence on a lost soul, named Jake.

Characters: JAKE, a lost soul, and ERNIE an enforcement angel

ERNIE speaks first.

"Go on. Off to Hell with you."

"Wait! That looks a lot more unpleasant than I expected!"

"Of course. Hop in."

"Wait! Wait! Don't you think that this is terribly unfair?"

"Here we go again."

"I mean, don't you think that this goes against free will?"

"Go ahead."

"I mean, if God is sovergn over the human will, then there is no way I could have willed otherwise than I did in the course of my life."

"God is only holding you responsible for the deeds you did because you wanted to, so you are not being condemned for anything you didn't want to do."

"True but my wanting to sin was not something up to me. If I had wanted to be a saint and not a sinner, I couldn't have any control over that. Only God could."

"It was either God or blind luck. Since you could only do what you want, it's not like if God 'withheld His power' that you would thus be in control of your destiny."

"So you are a 'compatibilist' about free will then?"

"Of course. We are all good Reformed theologians up here. If free will means anything, it means being able to choose between actions. But actions are not mere states of affairs or events. They have an end or purpose which is essential to their character. Consequently, while choice is necessarily a condition of action, mere choice is not sufficient to account for directed or purpose determined feature of action since choice is simply the power to actualize or bring about one state of affairs rather than another. To account for the directed feature of action, will must also include inclination as well as choice. So free will must be about action, choice. and inclination. So one acts freely when they can choose the action they want. These are the necessary and sufficient conditions for free will. To choose to act apart from inclination is impossible, since what would result could not be an action. Further, a choice-making is a paradigm case of an unmoved mover, a something that cannot act unless first inacted. As such, it either is unexplained, a brute choice, or explained by a prior choice-making, or explained by a prior inclination. A brute choice would result in no action, as explained before, and this not be a meaningful expression of the human will. If you, per impossible, could have an infinite regress of choice-makings, it still would not be sufficient to account for the the thing to be explained, which is the human action, just like in the Aristotle's metaphysics. (You'll be passing Limbo on your way down so you can check with him personally.) So the explanation must terminate on something in motion and in the will which naturally is inclination. Just like in Aristotle's argument, the causal series terminates in a final cause. So a free act is an act that chooses according to the soul's inclination. In short, you are free if you can do what you want. That being the case, free will is comapatible with divine sovergnty since God can manage our freedom without interfereing with it by managing what we want. Now dive in!"

"Wait! Don't you see? Let's suppose that there is a sheriff of a small town full of good people who is very able and clever. The town is a very good town with good people so the sheriff doesn't have a lot to do. He wants to be remembered as a worthwhile sheriff but if something bad doesn't happen the town will never see his skills at putting away crime. He finally gets a great idea. He checks the local hospital to find out about all the new births of children that month. Then he begins a longterm program of cultivating evil in the hearts of the children so that most of them grow up to be criminals and he can demonstrate his concern for justice. He does this, not by coercing them by force, but rather by brilliantly managing their circumstances so that they cater to all their weakness and most base desires. He is very careful not to make them do anything they do not want to do but only managing according to what they want to do. He thus succeeds in his plan and the town realizies what a valuable sheriff he is. But do we really think that those kids are freely being criminals? Isn't this what God is doing according to you?"

"So you think that it's the apostle Paul who's the real monster in Romans 9 do you?"

"That's just a matter of an uncharitable interpretation. You see . . . ."

"Stop! We don't need to play that game. It's time for me to show you this. Here."

"What is it? It looks like an album for a certificate."

"Look inside it."

"It looks like a photo of a bunch of guys at a crawfish boil party all dressed in neon clothing."

"And who does that guy look like -- the one with the huge stogie between his teeth."

"Why that looks like the one who was on the throne in the room we just left!"

"That's right! And who does that guy off to the side look like?"

"Why it's . . . it's ME!"

"We all had a pretty good time then."

"I don't remember this. When was this taken?"

"At the Covenant of Redemption ratification party 'before' the creation of Heaven and Earth."

"I thought it was just the members of the Trinity. You mean all of us were pre-existent souls that were part of the consultation? I didn't see that anywhere in the Bible."

"Something like that. Only you were a lot less utilitarian then. You thought that justice was objective and intrinsic and worth pursuing for its own sake back then. The Bible only has stuff on a need to know basis and you really didn't need to know this. There was a 'time' when all souls existed in a state of perfect rectitude and with a perfectly clear frame of mind. The plan of God to create was presented before all of you while you were all competant to be ideal observers not blind to any relevant fact nor biased askew toward any judgement. It was shown that there was no coherent world plan possible that did not include lost sinners and that the one proposed was the best on the balance of considerations based on aspects of the character of God with respect to His justice, His love, His mercy, and so on. Everyone considered the various possible ways the world might go and the various roles they would play in each scheme, until one was selected that was the best solution. No one minded and everyone was excited about the best way of acheiving the highest aim. Once the decision was made to uninanimous acceptance, creation proceeded apace with each soul waiting to fuflfil its role during its turn on stage. Each soul was the advocate for its appearance on the earth. Of course, I'm not getting it exactly right but you get the idea."

"Funny, I don't remember this."

"Now that you have the album in your hands, something like recollection should be happening to you now."

"Yes . . . yes . . . I see what you mean. In one sense, I have existed from all eternity but not so in another sense."

"There you go."

"So you're saying that at a time when I was a competent observer of all the possible worlds that God might make, I concurred in choosing this one knowing that in it, I would be eternally lost among other things?"

"That was your original position. See for yourself. Turn the page there."

"It's a will and testiment! It says, 'Whereas I am in a condition of exceptionally sound and competent judgement and whereas I have been fully informed of the relevent facts and whereas I concur with the judgement that this world is among the best world for bringing about the glory of God to whom such glory properly belongs and to whom I conscientiously intend to glorify, I hereby freely volunteer to play the part assigned to me by the said chosen plan, even though such a plan includes my ultimate damnation. Kudos on all the good work and congratulations.' And that is my signature by my hand on the bottom!"

"Even so."

"So what you're really saying is that in the case of God rather than the sheriff, its possible to see the particular course of life as a kind of rational contracting under ideal conditons with God even if I can't actually control the circumstances of my life and their impact on my desires."

"That would be a bingo. Anything else?"

"Let me think. Nope. I got nothing."

"Fine. Now skip along. You're scheduled to magmafy the leathery hide of the demons of lust so that it melts off their bones and exposes their screaming little nerve endings."

"I thought it was supposed to be the other way around."

"Boy, you're 0 for 3, aren't you?"

Notes on Dilemmas of Faith

I was reading an article on line about the Bhagavad Gita which clearly saw the Gita as teaching nothing that could not be independently worked out by reason apart from it. That the doctrine is worked out for Arjuna by an avatar is only based on the fact that at the time, life was pretty messed up and that it is only in such times that God takes on human form. Revelation is merely hygenic not novel in the Gita. So basicly tha Gita is another classical statement of the perreniel philosophy. The article in commenting on this contrasted it with "orthodox Christianity" which teaches that beliefs are to be accepted because absurd and just because the Church teaches it.

This struck me as another example of the same false dilemma many atheists (and non-believers in the perrenial philosophy) often use to object to Christianity; either something is wholey established by reason or it is purely postivistic, having no rational bearing. As anyone who has looked at the judeo-christian tradition can attest, the judeo-christian tradition is neither. The contents of the judeo-christian tradition are not wholey derived from reason, but neither have the no rational bearing. The tradition has logical consistancy and some explanatory value with respect to the facts and is this open to criticism in the light or reason and learning. For some critics, granting the point makes little difference, however one would have thought the real bite of the dilemma. If the judeo-christian traditon is accessible to intellectual investigation and appreciation, in what sense is it necessarily arbitrary and anti-intellectual?

One might think that it must be because it unavoidably turns on accepting something on the basis of faith and testimony and that we could never reasonably accept anything as true on such a basis. Now it seems clear that accepting something on the basis of testimony and because one has decided to put one's faith in a witness could never produce belifs with the authority of pure or scientific reasoning. But the rationality of accepting faith is not theoretical rationality, is it? In fact, the decision to accept a belief based on the authority of a witness is a case like a moral dilemma. In a moral dilemma, one confronts at least a prima facie conflict of duites (or rights, or virtues, or values, or contracts etc.) such that it seems impossible to satisfy one obligation without violating another. In the case of moral dilemmas, the presumption is that the duties, where they apply, apply categorically. In a dilemma of faith, one is confronted with hypothetical duites (or . . . etc.) that do not actually conflict because which one applies depnds on whether the witness is speaking truly or not. However since we don't know whether to believe the witness of not we do not know if we would be actually upholding on duty or violating another one by believing in the witness and acting on that belief. But like a moral dilemma, a faith dilemma may only be apparent and there may be an option which is possible moral but not necessarily immoral if things turn out to be otherwise that attested to.

In the judeo-christian tradition, revelation is not merely hygenic in conserving forgotten truth but is intrusive and announces new states of affairs that would not have been known otherwise. Revelation is heraldic and kyregmatic and prophetic, not conservative. The question is whether to trust the prophets. They often come with insignia that testifies to their authority but these insignia presuppose priorly accepted prophecy and so on. Sometimes the prophets command us to do things that are prima facie morally wrong such as sacrifice our first born son, or wipe out an entire race, or stone homosexuals and adulterers, or tolerate slavery, or hold truths that are prima facie impossible to prove as true or coherent. Of course, if God the ideal observer truly requires these things then he sees the rational and moral grounds for doing so even if we don't but if the prophet is channeling a half-digested falafel, it would be rash to act on it.

Still as some hard cases of moral dilemmas prove to work out upon further clarification of concepts, further information, and/or creative alternatives, it seems possible that a faith dilemma could also be worked through and that a kind of certainty can be reached about the practical satisfactoriness of the decision either to believe and trust or not in alleged revelation. In the case of the judeo-christian tradition, or any particular expression of it, the fact that the claims it makes are open to further intellectual criticism is one of the factors that makes possible the rational assessment of a decision of trust. Further, just as there may be no straight forward calculus for settling moral dilemmas and thus a need for character and discernment to see through them, a similar demand on judgement is called for in the case of faith dilemmas. This also suggests a need for community social interaction in such decision making.

Reason can at least rebut scepticism about any of the foundations of the possibility of successful decision making in the case of faith dilemmas, even if it cannot always or ever refute such scepticism, whether that be scepticism about a theistic metaphysic that makes revelation possible, or scepticism about the possibility of a value judgement that is not fully explicable. Reason can play a role as we have noted in assessing the various candidates for being such a revelation. The decision to believe is something that speaks to the end of human flourishing or worth, scepticism about which may be rebuted by reason. And so it seems that rational decisions to trust are possible and that we even have the rational right to make them if they are and that this right is part of the body of rights that ought to be preserved in modern society by the state. So given the fresh spate of works by certain distinguished professors about belief in God as a delusion, the end of faith, and so on, we couldn't really imagine the force of such arguments as delegitimizing the full citizenship of religious believers qua being such.

I think that this is where the judeo-christian argument for a secular public sphere meets the dictum for statecraft as soulcraft. The public square refuses on the one hand to promote any one religion over another but on the other hand it promotes and elevates the right to religious belief in a criticizable faith as a necessary feature of a modern rational democracy. Because its in the painful reflection that goes on in making such decisions that contributes to the development of virtue in citizens. The spread of this right concommittedly with the spread of democratic principles and institutions points to the prosperity of the impact of the judeo-christian tradition throughout the world, since only the judeo-christian tradition among all the religions (including Islam) makes the claim for the possibility of a more than hygenic but still non-superstitious revelation and thus formulates the right to religious belief in this specific sense. That is about as theocratic as we need to get.

Fairyland Diner RPG Character Helps

If anyone needs help in deciding how to design their character for either the Fairyland Diner Game (see title link) or any other of my AOB based games, I have the following supplemental helps. Sometimes you need a kickstart to think of what to do. The following basically generates some data points for your character which can be used to solve a narrative problem given the data. None of the information here alters the actual game mechanics but you can use it to decide how to interact in the game. The important value is to maintain a realistic consistency even though you're in Fairyland.

Characters have a temperament profile, native endowments, and background experience. In each of the following sets of four categories, distribute 10 points between the four so that none has less than 0 or more than 5. The higher the number, the greater the amount of that particular temperment, endowment, or experience in your background. The tables below suggest some reasonable expectations for someone with a high score (4 or 5) in each category.

5 - Amazingly High
4 - Substantially high
3 - Slightly High
2 - Average
1 - Low
0 - Very Low

You can select the exact amount for each category if there are certain conditions that you already have in mind or determine the results randomly. One way to do it randomly is to roll 10 dice, re-rolling those that come up as '5' or '6' and then assign 1 point for each dice that comes up the number that is the same as the number of each category. You can re-roll those that exceed 5 in one category also.

TEMPERAMENT: Distribute 10 points among the following.
(___) 1. Choleric - a high may be a natural organizer
(___) 2. Sanguine - a high may be a natural salesperson
(___) 3. Melancholic - a high may be a natural artist
(___) 4. Phlegmatic - a high may be a natural diplomat

ENDOWMENTS: Distribute 10 points among the following.
(___) 1. Athletic - a high may have elite physical skills
(___) 2. Intelligent - a high may have a natural aptitude for Magic
(___) 3. Charismatic - a high may be a natural leader
(___) 4. Family Nobility - a high may be well connected

EXPERIENCE: Distribute 10 points among the following.
(___) 1. Education - a high may have several magic spells or devices
(___) 2. Military - a high may have combat skills and equipment
(___) 3. Vocational - a high may have special skills and tools
(___) 4. Business - a high may have mangement or financial skills

Once you have generated your Character data, try to answer the following question in a way consistent with the information. Try to reconcile all the data with the answer as much as possible.

Question: Given all the background data on your character, how did he or she come to be working in a diner anyway?

There you have your background story and the essential identity of your character.

Peity as a Point of Contact

Here's a famous quote from CS Lewis (more or less) from the Screwtape Letters:

"There are two mistakes one can make regarding the Devil; one is to deny that He exists and the other is to have an unhealthy fascination with him."

It has struck me lately that this is a common feature in various aspects of religion according to the Scriptures. It is clear that the Bible does not deny the realm of the demonic but equally clear that it does not indulge in any speculation about it. A similar example is the biblical attitude toward prophecy and eschatology (as I understand it). The Bible does not deny the reality of historical prophecy but it also does not indulge in runaway apocalyticism. (For example it does not really support the kind of dispensational and millenial accounts like Dade, Scofield, or the Millerites.) Yet another example is miracles. The Bible refuses to indulge the demand for no miracles such as found among the Sadducees and the Greeks but also refuses to indulge all demands for miracles such those of the Pharisees and the "Jews". Something similar could be said about the charismatic gifts as well.

I also notice that this pattern is characteristic of the classical and Aristotelian account of virtue as the mean relative to a context and between two extremes. For example, courage is a virtue between the vices of cowardice and rashness. One extreme involves a deficiency of courage and the other an excess of it. In the present case, call the virtue in question "peity", that is the fear of the Lord. It looks like an apt word for the defect of peity is "impeity" or obstinate irreligiosity, and an apt word for the excess of peity is "fanaticism". To be clear we have to distinguish. How could it be possible that one could fear the Lord too much? The answer lies in the distinction between posessing the virtue of peity as a virtue as opposed to having the vice of an excess of peity. To say that you cannot fear the Lord enough is to say that you cannot possess the virtue of peity too much. This is the difference between fearing the Lord and being so heavenly minded that you are no earthly good.

Further I note that this understanding of peity is not unique to the Biblical tradition but is similarly found in the religious traditions outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The appeal to Greek thought here already illustrates this but it is also commonly found among Hindus, Confucians, Buddhists, Taoists, and Zorasterians. (Islam is a special case since it obviously depends on the J-C tradition.) The sources of those religions exhibit a similar tendency to support the middle way between extremes in religious observance. They also provide their own examples of cases of healthy religion (such as the formulations of theistic scholasticism in Hinduism and the social ethical teachings of Confucius) versus cases of degenerating cultified expressions of the religion on the one hand (soccery among Taoists and the Kali cult of the thuggi in Hinduism) and jaded secular movements on the other hand (the elite intellectualist philosophes found in all religious traditions and the Theravada school in Buddhism).

It thus seems that the virtue of peity is of a piece with the nature of man as homo religious and that the phenomena points to a natural law of appropriate belief formation in all humanity which is part of the divine law written on the human heart, the universal religious a priori. This finds a ready explanation in the Christian perspective as the phenomenalogically palpable effect of general revelation and common grace restraining human sinfulness. Given the inescapable vagueness of the tension between common grace and depravity in any particular person, this may give us a sufficiently precise way of formulating the point of contact between the gospel and the heart of non-believers, viz., that we have a point of contact with the gospel to the extent of the manifestation of peity in the hearts or the culture of non-believers.

This allows for a differentiation between various non-believers that allows us to give a differentiated answer to the question of what the Christian attitude should be to non-Christians and their faiths. To the extent that the religion manifested among non-Christians is the vice of excessive peity, we hold that it is the work of Satan and that the gods thus identified and worshipped are demons in disguise. To the extent that a religion manifests a defect of peity, it is a case of the fool who says in his heart that there is no God and is satanic in virtue of being subject to Satan's deceptions. But in so far as it is an expression of the virtue of peity, then we can see it as a work of the Holy Spirit in his ministry of providing for all a general testimony of the truth of God, as a preparitia evangelica, and that it may even teach something about the truth of God to those who already trust in Christ.

An important aspect of this account is that we do not just conveniently define what is and what is not true peity by the degree of identity with the Christian message. The account assumes that the religion is already internally differentiated by its own lights into these three catagories and that we can recognize what is good in a religion as convivial with true peity in our religion independently. This also means that those aspects that Christianity would find to be satanic would also encounter a prior criticism from their own religion and thus that the starting point for the prior plausibility of Christian faith is in each religion's own self-criticism.

One important feature of this relation between religion at its best and Christain faith is that it is potentially recognizable that aspects of that religion and Christianity have some features similar to the relation of Biblical Judaism and Christianity, such as the relationship of substitution where something better has come along, as in the case of the replacement of passover for communion. A possible example of this is ancestor worship. Many eastern faiths for example Japan hold strongly to the veneration of ancestors. In this they express the belief in an afterlife in survival after death and that the state of the dead is one of personal consciousness and interaction. The practice fosters an attitude of continued respect and devotion for the dead and the past and is in many ways similar to the veneration of saints in Catholicism. But this is put aside for the superior promise of immediate recourse to God in evangelical faith, but this is a case of the good being eclipsed by the better. The substitution is reasonable and appreciable and is intelligble to the one considering making the substitution. In the absence of a theology of unque mediatorship which could only come by way of the recognition and acceptance of a special revelation, ancestor worship is a respectable good and can be an expression of true peity.

Finally, the virtue of peity has its mirror virtue. An example of a mirror virtue is the relation between magniminity and humility. Aristotle famously considered humility to be a vice and spoke of the virtue of being a great man. This at first seems to put Christianity which makes humility a supreme virtue out in the cold. But when we do an Aristotelian analysis of humility as a virtue and compare it with a similar analysis of magniminity we discover something interesting. If magniminity is a virtue it has a vice of excess and a vice of defect. The vice of defect of magniminity is something like self-depreciation while its vice of excess would certainly be pride, egotism, or hubris. If humility is a virtue, it also has a vice of excess and a vice of defect. Not enough would certainly be pride but what would too much be? Certainly it would be self-depreciation. In other words, humility as a virtue mirrors magniminity as a virtue, to have a defect in one is to have an excess in the other, just as in a mirror the reflection of my right hand is my reflection's left hand. So there is compatibility between them but also a tension between them. This illustrates the yin-yang character that exists in the unity of virtues.

In the case of peity then I think the mirror virtue is human excellence or the virtue of being pro-human. And in general I think that religious virtues (Love, Faith, Hope) mirror the humanistic virtues (Courage, Wisdom, Temperance). This means that the point of contact may be expressed in apparently humanistic ways. For example, we may express Neitzcheanism as too humanistic amd fundamentalism as not humanistic enough, while fundamentalism might also be characterized as too pious and Neitzcheanism as not pious enough. There is a Christian humanism as well as a Christian theism. In fact the argument need go no further than the great success Christian theology has had already in accommodating to Greek humanism. And so genuine Christian peity is "naturally" compatible with genuinely humanistic science.

Stephen C. Meyer Article added.

I discovered that the nefarious Dr. Meyer journal article, the one that caused such a dust up because the author argues for a specific thesis of Intelligent Design in it and another more nuetral scientist, Dr. Richard von Sternberg, published it in a Smithsonian hosted journal, which lead to reprisals against Dr. Sternberg. He has been vindicated for his role in this by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal agency.

You can now read the paper for yourself at the link. For a discussion on recent developments on the case, see here.

Christian Study Center List

I nostalgically added a list of Christian Study centers, found on several campuses all over the country including some Ivy League schools. They represent the evangelical ideal of the wedding of thought and faith and the intergration of Christianity with academic fields into an intergrated worldview.

I say nostalgic because it represents a shattered dream of mine to be part of such a thing but which now seems remote. I have not been able to really survive in academia. It is interesting to me that my adjunct work has brought me closer to other professors who show a like minded compatibility with me who are not christians and yet with whom I can have excellent conversations to all of our satisfaction. If there is anything left of scholarly work its what I do with these colleagues.

It also seems to me that I am in a stronger position being an MA holder with some doctoral work at a school like Syracuse University, than a Ph.D. holder with that degree from many a state university, even though I won't get the "big" money adjunctng with just an MA.

It reminds me of the Ph.D. holder I once met working in a bookshop whose career was essentially housepainting because he never got tenure. I have to admit that part of the issue was wanting to live. During so much of the time I was in doctoral work, I was also suicidal. It didn't seem worthwhile to risk my life for an advanced degree. At least that still haunts me.

Thank you "Tall Skinny Kiwi"

. . . who commented on my emergent church post and who has an interesting blog (now added to the role). Check it out.

A Comercial Quality Armitage RPG

With extreme humility and great mortification, I discovered that there is already available on line, an adaptation of the BESM game for the Armitage III setting. From the linked website:

"In 2001, Dan Grendell was contracted by Guardians of Orders to write a sourcebook about the Armitage III animes. Like many publishing projects, the book ended up not being printed. However, all is not lost, as fans of Armitage and the BESM game will be able to enjoy much of what would have been in the book here on the web."

The work at this site is substantially complete for the setting. There are character sheets for the main characters in both the OVA series and the Dual-Matrix movie. Also, the distinctive features and powers of the world are represented in the game additions. It would have been a professional package (it still is very professional) but is available on line.

The website also contains more detailed background to the original setting that you can use for the AOBG engine adapted setting that I posted here.

Fairyland Diner, an RPG

"Fairyland Diner", a Shoujo Manga RPG

Sort of a cross between "Phantastes" and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", this RPG is a game setting for the "All Outta Bubblegum" engine. Thanks and apologies to Michael Sullivan and Jeffrey Grant again. Apologies also to Gary Gygax for borrowing an idea from his Aerth campaign setting in his "Dangerous Journeys" game (I'm not worthy!).


Setting:

Parallel to the mundane world of ordinary experience is the land of the Fae. Imagine a world that looks like the inverse of the Earth's surface, with land there being where the oceans are here and vica versa. In the area of the continent that corresponds to the Atlantic Ocean, in the place counterpart to where ancient Atlantis was, is the great Seelie court where all the noble Faerie races meet with the King and Queen of the Fae. The Glorious City is almost too magnificient for human eyes, but it does have its suburban parts that are more remote from the Castle. The City is efficiently defended and policed to keep the awful Fae of the unseelie races out.

In one of these suburbs is "Twinkle's Cafe", a comfortable, happy greasy spoon joint that mainly serves the neighborhood locals as well as distinguished fae that have business at the Castle and need a quick lunch. Most of the fare includes things like "Moonbeam Loaf" and "Morning Dew Tea", but you can also find your biscuits and gravy and philly cheese steak sandwich as well. It's a place where everybody knows you name and the name of your clan.

Things are normally quiet and pleasant at Twinkle's but the word has come down that there is a need for new stewards and servants to serve and dwell in courts of the King's officers. The need is so great that they are even looking in the humblest places of the City. The royal messenger has declared that one of the wait staff, floor managers, or cooks at Twinkle's will be included in this great promotion, but only one. The diner is allowed its own means of determining who the lucky individual will be. The winner will not only receive the job but will also be made fit for court service be recovering all of its lost Glamour.

Characters:

All characters are employees of the diner as well as being a member of one of the fae races welcome in the great city. Essentially, all fae are the same. There differing characteristics are a result of different amounts of Glamour in each individual. Among the Seelie races at the diner are:

Faeries Proper: True faeries are of high demeanor and noble character. They are prismatic in appearance and seem to be outlined with a rainbow. A typical attitude of a high faerie would be to pick out another player character and work hard to assure that he or she is the one picked to go to the Castle. Faeries have 7-8 points of Glamour.

Pixies: Pixies are basicly good natured and social but they are addicted to fun and mischief (as well as to glitter). They will use almost anything as an excuse to tease and trick. Pixies seem childlike in appearance and have a pastel glow like the color of so many flowers. People are attracted to pixies but may come to regret it. Pixies have 5-6 points of Glamour.

Brownies: Brownies live closer to the earth than other fae and often appear in earth tones. They are easily irritated and cranky and will do anything to assure their privacy or space. Nothing matters more to a Brownie than his or her personal comfort and peace. Brownies have 3-4 points of Glamour.

Leprechauns: Leprechauns are kelly green and very homely looking. They are also extremely greedy and selfish and will do anything to get ahead. They can never be content with who or what they are. A typical Leprechaun attitude to the contest would be "Now is my big chance to blow this dump and these losers. Let's see what I can do to make sure that happens". Leprechuans have 1-2 points of Glamor.

Redcaps: Redcaps are colored blood red and are petrifying ugly. They are extremely vicious and will attack anyone just for the sake of causing misery. For this reason, Redcaps are considered an Unseelie race and are not tolerated within the City. Redcaps have 0 points of Glamour or less.

If a fae gets frustrated in anything significant to him or her, he or she loses Glamour. If a fae loses more Glamour than is allowed for his or her race, he or she transmogrifies into a fae of the race below it without losing his or her identity. If a fae receives more Glamour than is designated for his or her race, he or she transmogrifies into the next upper race. In each case the newly formed fae has all the features and motives of a member of that race.

There are also other enchanted creatures that might find their way into the diner -- Gryphons, Unicorns, Dwarves, Dyads, Satyrs, etc. They will also have some amount of Glamour that will also be reflected in their temperament or appearance (as determined by the Faereferee).

The Social Contract:

All players play faeries in the game except for one, who is the Faereferee. The Faereferee is responsible for creating and managing the the diner and its customers as well as making sure that the rules are applied fairly and that everyone is having fun. The Faereferee has read all the rules and designed all the encounters accordingly. He or she describes the setting and what happens during the story by answering players questions.

The rest of the players each manage the actions of one individual character that they design in the game setting. When they interact with the game environment the Faereferee acts as their eyes and ears. When they interact with other player characters, they talk and coordinate their actions in character.

There are also other characters in the game other than the player's characters. These are run by the Faereferee just as player character would. Non-player characters also have Glamour and Fairy Dust as designed for them by the Faereferee.

Designing a Player Character:

Each player character (the character that the player governs in the game) is a member of a faerie race according to his or her Glamour points. To design a character, a player starts with 5 Glamour points, 5 Faerie Dust points (see below), and 3 Building points. The player must spend all of his or her building points when designing the character. One building point may be spent to add 1 point to the character's total Glamour points or 2 points to the character's total Faerie Dust points. Once the points are spent and added, the results are complete. Then the player identifies his faerie's starting race according to the final amount of Glamour assigned.

After this, the player decides a name for his or her character (something with a flower, berry, or animal reference, but not necessarily confined to that), decides what job they have at the diner, (cook, wait staff, floor manager, cashier -- a person may wind up doing several jobs like in any earthly diner), and also some bit of back story about how the character wound up working in the diner or his our her upbringing to flesh the character out. Really good back stories should be rewarded with additional Fairy Dust points and/or other attributes, skills, equipment, or liabilities that are designed to effect the basic game mechanics and which also make sense according to the character's back story. It is the Faereferee's discretion but he or she should be open to the Player's input

Resolving Character Actions:

Everything that a faerie character does has a hint of magic to it, an air of something chimey and sparkly. When it comes to important actions, the player should describe his or her characters actions as something like an ordinary action with a magical twist (like pouring coffee from a levitating coffee pot or serving eggs that dance on the plate).

Actions that have some consequential outcomes for the character are resolved by rolling two regular dice and regarding sixes as zeros. (E.g. Rolling a "two" and a "three" equals five but rolling "four" and "six" just equals four. Rolling "double boxcars" is zero.) All important actions fall under two classifications; Mellowing Actions and Harshing Actions.

Basic Idea: Actions that are important enough to the game either narratively or strategicly are either the sort of thing a Californian might say "Dude! You're harshing my mellow!" about or not. Actions that meet with resistance by anyone directly involved even if the most passive-aggressive way are considered Harshing Actions for the purposes of the game. All other actions are considered Mellowing Actions as long as anyone involved is at least open to them or if no one else is directly involved.

A Mellowing Action is any act that does anybody any good, such as trying to persuade someone to do the right thing, serving a meal like home, healing an injury, etc. Roll two dice and if the result is equal to or less that the number of Glamour Points the character has, the mellowing action is successful. If the roll is greater than the number of Glamour points a character has, the result is unsuccessful and the player's character loses one point of Glamour.

A Harshing Action is any action that bothers or inhibits another character such as teasing, making mischief, insulting, tripping, or tricking, etc. Roll the two dice and if the result is equal to or less than the player character's number of Glamour Points, the attempt fails (the victem avoids the trick or is not phased by the insult). If the result is greater than the player character's Glamour points, the action is successful and the other player loses a point of Glamour.

Fairy Dust: Fairy dust is a residual and fungible form of Glamour. If a player wants to assure the odds of a successful outcome to an action, he or she can spend points of Fairy Dust before a roll. Each point of Fairy Dust spent is one point subtracted from the roll in the case of Mellowing Actions or one point added to Harshing Actions. Fairy Dust points must be spent before the roll of the dice and once used are not recovered. However Fairy Dust may be rewarded to players for good roleplaying or by finding a treasure of Fairy Dust, etc.

Winning and Losing:

Losing: If a faerie loses enough Glamour, he or she changes races accordingly. If a fae is reduced to becoming a Redcap, the city security will come for him or her and he or she will be dragged out of the city and the game.

Winning: The game ends when a player character is selected to serve in the Seelie Court. This could be either through the team effort of all the player characters or because they are the last one standing not turned into a Redcap. If there is more than one character left at the end of the game, the players must decide among themselves who won.

Finally: My political movement has mobilized!

It is always been dificult to admit that my sensibilities have been conservative, in religion, in philosophy, and in politics as well, especially in politics. This is very much due to the fact that I work in highly academic enviroments and politics is not a hill I care to die on. But it is also due to the fact that my prefered political persuasion has an intellectual pedigree that remains obscure and is often confused with backwardness. It would seem that a conservative view is just mere unenlightened dogmatism and this is substantiated by the fact that many people are conservative because they are unenlightened dogmatists.

But a good conservative will consider both the Socratic effort to come to terms with the ignorance that is obscured by cheap and inherited opinions and also the limits of standards of analyis, precision, and demonstration. A conservative may appear to be naive but this naivete is the result of reflection and conscientious choice, a higher order state of mind that is not mere naivete.

I would go into it further but I never had the ambition to make this much a political blog. However, I cannot ignore the fruity appeal of the new blog going on over at National Review Online, devoted to the phenomena of Granola Conservativism -- a version of politics where right wing values are combined with left wing sensibilities. (See link in title.)

I say that its appealing on a sentimental level. I prefer organic food self-reliant strategies, alternative medicine, small communities, folk and blues, and so on. I also do not accept the materialist, economis reductionist, and negative rights only posture of the core of the Republican party. And I am influenced by the culture of the sixties at my age. So its not suprising that I should like this so much.

But from what I've seen so far "Crunchy Conservatvism" is just the classic position of Aristotle, Burke, Weaver, and the Southern Agrarians, and so not really different. A possible exception with this is that apparently CCs are not so devoted to it as to become a kind of strong utopianism. They don't seem to be interested so far in adopting a rigid Distributivist model of economics which is both untenable and disasterous. This helps me to see CCs as something between traditional cultural conservatives and the neoconservatives who think that traditionalists are vapid. In that sense my own view is that there is a need for something like a mediation. Neocons have discovered something in showing how social science underscores the value of and provides a source for criticising social policy in a richer and more morally engaging sense than the mere economics of the hardcore libertarians. But even they may be too dismissive of ordinary sensibilities to appreciate the reasons for saving the appearances.

Crunchy Conservativism appears to not want to be another form of identity politics which is also attractive about it. The convergence of right and left folkways is other than expected and not something that had been aimed at. It certainly makes for an interesting discussion topic.

This card should be in your Deck!

Thanks to Aaron Williams and Gallery. (Caution; Strong Language!)

Armitage RPG Encounter Deck

Here is a "supplement" to the Armitage RPG on this blog to help people who are stuck coming up with story ideas for the game. Typical encounters by characters in the Armitage universe are identified with indices on an ordinary deck of cards. Red suits identify situations friendly to the player characters and black suits hostile ones (unless otherwise stated). The GM simply draws a hand of cards and tries to work the offered elements into a good story line or to supplement her own storyline. She may repeat the process as necessary.

A -- Scientists/Technicians (among the few that knew or can reverse engineer technology)
2 -- Family members, co-workers, or friends.
3 -- Executive sponsers (heads of companies or agencies that want to use the Thirds)
4 -- Activists/Terrorists (Either pro-robot or anti-robot)
5 -- Police Detectives
6 -- Government Agents
7 -- Seconds, Security Robots, or other robots (neutral)
8 -- "Gadgets" (neutral)
9 -- Millitary Units (neutral)
10 -- Informants, Flunkies, or Goons
Red Picture cards -- Thirds
Black Picture Cards -- Assassin Robots
Jokers -- Cybernet Contacts

Social Contract Option: Have every player play both a character and be a GM. Each player sets up their humanity chips and describes their character according to the rules and prefered tweaks. Each player also is dealt a hand of four cards. One pre-agreed player starts by setting the stage and tries to incorporate one of the story elements in her hand by introducing that encounter to one or the other (or more than 0ne) player characters. She remains in control of telling the story until another player takes it from her by playing one of his cards and introducing that card's element into the story. One player maintains control of the story until another player takes over by playing a card from their hand and introducing that element. This can only happen in between action resolution checks. When a player runs out of cards, they draw a new hand. When the deck (or decks) are used up, reshuffle. Play may be competative (be the last Third standing) or cooperative (see how many player characters can reach their goals before becoming 'dead' or assassin robots).