Disqus - Latest Comments for disqus_andrewmartin_name

Re: I don’t want to change your beliefs, I want to help you believe them

Andrew Martin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:15:20 -0000

Hey.

You expressed well in the middle there something that's bothered me for a while: people often express belief as a matter of choice, as if choosing to believe in God, say, is like choosing a shirt to wear. But that is experientially wide of the mark: the believer cannot, as a pure act of will, simply stop believing. I guess it works the other way around as well. Intellectual assent might shape one's experienced belief over time, but it is not the same thing.

But then I get the argument as far as "This, therefore, is not a belief in god, but a belief in the Bible." After that, I can't quite follow the last two substantive paragraphs. If you feel like fleshing it out some more, that would be the place to start.

Re: On (False) Inclusivity

Andrew Martin — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:01:01 -0000

A wise man said "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". It cuts every which way.

Re: the lackluster return of themattscott

Andrew Martin — Tue, 24 May 2011 16:14:20 -0000

Re: Health and Care

Andrew Martin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:46:58 -0000

I think this thing is eating comments

Re: Health and Care

Andrew Martin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:14:35 -0000

According to some optimistic projections, in theory, the U.S. could possibly save money.

Well, right now, you have, by far, the most expensive healthcare system on the planet; and, in terms of measurable health outcomes, far from the best healthcare system on the planet. If no one can devise reform which reduces the one and improves the other, then you have a problem.

Re: Health and Care

Andrew Martin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:10:36 -0000

Derek,

To talk of the Government stealing from the rich to give to the poor is fairly emotive language: perceptions of what is excessive will vary greatly. As far as I know, virtually every developed country ensures healthcare for the poorest through taxation: I don't think anyone has found a viable alternative.

Perhaps it comes down to a question of what Government is for. Around here, people are fond of saying that the first duty of Government is the defence of the realm, but it has long struck me that we can sum up the purpose of Government more completely and succinctly as being in existence in order to protect the weak from the excesses of the strong. [Perhaps in a perfect system, we could omit "excesses of" but that seems optimistic right now.] Strength is of course relative, and contextual.

Re: Health and Care

Andrew Martin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:39:54 -0000

Oh, and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that Glenn Beck is one of those spoof TV news shows. No one actually takes it seriously, do they???

Re: Health and Care

Andrew Martin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:36:17 -0000

The specifics of American Healthcare Reform are none of my business, so I would not presume to lecture y'all.

But in response to Derek's point, any universal system - of healthcare, or benefits, or housing, or whatever - generally struggles to distinguish the "deserving poor" from the lazy, the profligate, and the fraudster. Nobody wants to be taken for a ride, nor to work in order that others should not have to, but most people recognise that some others have simply been dealt a bad hand in life.

With healthcare in particular, there are plenty of heart-wrenching stories where people suffer through no fault of their own: should the kid's access to lukemia treatment depend on whether their dad (or mum) works for a bank or for a fast-food outlet?

It strikes me - and this goes against my normal political bias - that the path of compassion, of grace, is to extend aid to whosoever we can. If that is pressed too far, you wind up with a society where no one has any incentive to work, to achieve, to make life better for their loved ones: but that doesn't seem the big danger right now, whereas the opposite does. If that could be achieved through charitable giving, that might be ideal: but statecraft right now seems to entail government intervention - taxation - to achieve such goals. So be it, I say.

Re: Religion as that which allows us to lose morality

Andrew Martin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:09:01 -0000

I've always imagined that the reason why France is such a laid-back, content, happy place is because good wine is so cheap and plentiful. But I'm doubtful that the inhabitants of the Paris banlieue, or the back-streets of Marseille, or the ethnic minorities in towns run by the Front National, would recognize the rosy picture. That article seems bogus to me: at best it finds a correlation without any hint of causation. Indeed, "religion" is surely much to vague a notion on which to make distinction anyway: even without assuming that every adherent always upholds the tenets of the faith, we must surely say that a religion which makes final reward dependent on continued observance will give rise to different behaviours from one which offers automatic eternal assurance.

But I don't doubt that the power of absolution is great - and is a double-edged sword: it sets us free from guilt, which can be a very debilitating thing; but if a lack of guilt makes us sin all the more, then something has gone badly wrong.

But is there a single good morality anyway? People come down on different sides over abortion and euthanasia, regardless of any faith - or lack of it. Some things shift and shift back over time, so we cannot argue for continuous progress in ethics, either. Therefore, I'm not sure that the question is well-posed. ;-).

Re: Food and the (coming) Revolution

Andrew Martin — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:11:10 -0000

BBC news today.... topical, anyway:
-------
'Organic has no health benefits'

Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large independent review has concluded...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/...

Re: Food and the (coming) Revolution

Andrew Martin — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:32:35 -0000

Hm. We might have slightly tougher food standards laws: I'd always assumed that it was a coincidence that whenever I visited the US there was some sort of e-coli or salmonella scare going on... but now I come to think of it, it does seem a bit too often: is there actually one nearly every week? I think that by and large our meat is produced in a healthier way: even battery hens are being replaced by slightly less vile systems.

Farming subsidies are crazy, and very wrong, mostly. They are at the heart of the European Union's structures, and have a very negative impact on poor countries wanting to sell food into the EU.

Wholesome, healthy, fresh food, rather than pre-prepared, salt and trans-fat laden muck, I can absolutely agree with.

I think my big problem with the "organic" label is that it's an all-or-nothing bandwagon. It's much more about consumer choice than about genuine health benefits. If the hormone levels in meat are dangerous to the people who eat it, do something about that. If fruit is toxic from pesticides, do something about that.

I think there's a gradual realization going on that healthcare and healthy living go hand in hand: if you have socialized medicine, you naturally start to think about ways to stop people from becoming sick in the first place, rather than spending a fortune on patching them up later. Not only is it cheaper, it's also better for everyone :-).

Re: Food and the (coming) Revolution

Andrew Martin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:58:28 -0000

Ok. I'll bite.

What if the only way to feed the world is to use pesticides, GMOs, hormones, and the like?

By what criteria are pesticides bad but pulling up weeds good? What, truly and precisely, does "sustainability" mean in this context? Were the Amish right all along?

It's not that organic food is more expensive merely on a whim or for business reasons or from scarcity - though I'm sure these are factors. It actually costs more to produce it: to produce the same number of potatoes, say, takes more land, more time, more resources. So, in terms of keeping people alive, it's not going to be optimal. Ever.

I wouldn't suggest for a moment that we didn't have room for improvement in the delivery of nutrient-rich, tasty food, with as few taints as possible. Or that we shouldn't try harder to ensure that over-mighty conglomerates in the rich world don't exploit farmers in the rest of the world.

As for me, then, fairtrade good (though it could be better). Organic, nah.

Re: on community, organic food, and perfect settings

Andrew Martin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:58:15 -0000

Shit, and too think, I was gonna study for a test now, instead my mind gets to race around in circles about ethical purchases.

oops. Sorry.

Re: on community, organic food, and perfect settings

Andrew Martin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:44:23 -0000

But why stop with food? Are you going to buy a locally-produced iPhone?

Re: Wrestling with my own Agnosticism (read disclaimers!)

Andrew Martin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:55:12 -0000

Not unrelated to the piece I want to write for Open Table Theology this month, but I'm not sure I'll have time.

I'm interested in why you pick on "violence" as the antithesis, as it were, of the gospel (or of something ... not sure I can pick up what). I don't disagree that it sits badly with following the Prince of Peace, but it's never really struck me as the central problem.

After the Indian Ocean tsunami, I remember a bishop being interviewed about whether such things should damage faith: how can there be a God who allows this to happen? His response was to ask whether when we see something good, right, pure, life-affirming happen, we see the non-believer tending to say "how can there not be a God to make this happen". If there's an asymmetry there, it is very interesting. I perhaps mis-remember the precise argument, but it struck me at first as trite and trivial, and later as possibly quite profound.

Re: (final thoughts) On America

Andrew Martin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:57:30 -0000

[Aargh. Disqus. Ugh.]

Although it was your recent Holiday weekend that occasioned your comments, I think it would be constructive to forget the America-specific part of this discussion: really, similar comments apply to most nations. Ok, a lot of us don't have pledges of allegiance (footnote: Ok, the UK introduced one a few years ago, but only for those being naturalized), but we do have national anthems with various patriotic sentiments.

And it seems to me that we have to be most cautious with all of them. We're often reminded from the pulpit that money, status, power can become our gods, our idols, if we're not careful: and that, without an explicit pledge of allegiance. When Christ said "no one can serve two masters", money was uppermost in his mind, but it hardly seems a large stretch to apply the same principle to nation.

It's tempting to say that identifying strongly with "home" is fine; that "my people" is laudable, and that things only start to go wrong when it gets to "mine above all others". But Peter tells us to live as "aliens and strangers" (or "foreigners and exiles") - associating strongly with the systems of this world is something he discourages - in the same section as he urges his readers to be subject to the emperor.

[as an aside, the 1990s use of the term "politically correct" was adopted by those who did not use inclusive language to belittle those who did ... so it's odd indeed to charge someone with not being politically correct, it seems to me.]

Re: On The Fourth of July

Andrew Martin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:58:39 -0000

:-) Touché.

Re: On The Fourth of July

Andrew Martin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:57:42 -0000

Achieving prosperity? That's the general goal of western capitalism, isn't it? America does it better than most. Pledge allegiance to that if you want to.

Other societies have set themselves different goals, though. Like community cohesion, or leaving no one behind, or defending the cause of the weak and the poor. All of these are achieved only imperfectly - and all require money - it's just a matter of priorities.

This is a red herring with respect to your original point, I think. It matters not, for the purposes of your point, whether the nation in question is a theocracy, despotic or benign dictatorship, constitutional monarchy, representative democracy or something else. If we make it our idol, we fall short of our higher calling.

Re: On The Fourth of July

Andrew Martin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:29:42 -0000

We have the greatest system ever devised by MAN to effect this. Perfect? No. Good? Yes.

Gosh. That's a strong statement. I rather suspect that the majority of humanity would disagree.

Re: On The Fourth of July

Andrew Martin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:25:04 -0000

The short answer is that no, there's nothing comparable in Britain. People who fly the British flag on their houses (or sleeves) are widely regarded as at best a little crazy and at worst neo-fascists. I think I can count on my thumbs the number of times I've encountered a patriotic song as part of a church service. And yet, the church is established in the state (that is to say, the nation); the Head of State (that is, the Queen) is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. We're pretty messed up in our own ways. It would take a long session, with many beers, to explain it all.

Re: On The Fourth of July

Andrew Martin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:46:33 -0000

It's not really up to me to comment. But I certainly get what Chad says about "people who mean well, who love Jesus and who just don't know any better." I spent 4th July with friends in Iowa a few years ago. I was kind-of alarmed with the singing of "My Country 'Tis of Thee" as part of the church service: partly because it is set to the tune of our national anthem :-), but more importantly because it appears to locate "Country" as the object of worship, instead of the Almighty. I tried, gently, to question this with some of my hosts, but they just couldn't grasp what I was complaining about.

Re: Imago Dei///Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:51:15 -0000

Well, I'd have to say that it's not clear cut: progress has given us some crazy creature comforts - which we maybe don't deserve when some people not far from us are struggling to put food on the table. But progress has also helped put food on the table, heal disease, and the rest. It's easy to be dewey-eyed about an idealistic lost era - when fathers died with sudden, devastating illness, leaving their families destitute; when mothers died in childbirth; when many children did not reach their fifth birthday; and so on. The same progress has let us find new and exquisite ways to kill more and more of our enemies, make some people incredibly wealthy at the expense of some people who are not, prolong lives when it might have been better for all concerned to let them come to an end, and so on.

[The figures for American life expectancy are shocking, actually - it is shocking to find the nation that spends the most on healthcare only middle-ranking in terms of average life expectancy. But I digress.]

I like Blake's comment about being a partner in the divine process; co-creators. That seems a more balanced perspective than my rhetorical line: but is something we have to take incredibly seriously. We mustn't duck the responsiblity which that implies: to create that which is good (with a commensurate sabbath, of course).

Re: how the evangelicals lost me, and why I might go back (pt4)

Andrew Martin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:24:48 -0000

I can't argue with most of what you have written. (though I'd kind-have worked on the assumption that those who relied on gnostic texts were, in a strong sense gnostics, and therefore heretics - if only because orthodoxy, like history, gets written by the winners).

But leaving aside the principled question of what the scripture is, there is the manifest problem that we are trying to interpret a series of writings from a span of a thousand and more years, as if they were a modern text. We bring centuries of distilled scholarship - some good, some bad, some truly misleading - with all its nuances to our reading. The NT writers do not treat the OT as a modern text, as we are often trained to do, but quote random proof texts with no regard at all for context (ok, some evangelicals do the same ... but they pretend they are having regard for context). And, as you said previously, people uncritically repeat what they have heard [a friend who'd been indoctrinated in an American church tried to convince me last year that the wine of bible times wasn't really alcoholic - as he had been taught - and was completely stymied by the question of how it was, then, that from Noah onwards the bible talks of people getting drunk].

I rather think that the whole sola scriptura thing is moot anyhow, just because our interpretation of the text is so variable anyway: after all, if its meaning were plain, we wouldn't have sincere, spirit-filled (?) people in different denominations with different interpretations, would we? Even if we were sure that scripture represented the whole, complete revelation of God [and that's a big if], since we can never grasp hold with certainty to everything it says, we would be no better off.

Re: Imago Dei///Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:28:50 -0000

Hi. Sorry for the rather agressive rhetoric: it's not generally my style. And let me begin by admitting that I've never read much moral philosophy.

It would certainly be rash indeed to say "because we can, we should". That way surely lies the destruction of everything. And yet, in a vast range of endeavours, we'd probably have to conclude "because we can, we probably will": the creative arts seem to be illustrating that rather eloquently, with taboos broken, mores ignored, and boundaries being crossed very often. Thank you Jim for making the connection with the creative arts. I wonder whether the consequences of science and technology are actually "steeper". Which does more harm in society: genetic engineering, or the artistic celebration of loose morality? [or, in a different age, a hypocritical puritanism]

"daring to create something we ought not create": the only thing I recall scripture enjoining us not to create is an idol. I'm not sure what to do with that injunction in this context.

We lack infinite wisdom - but also we lack omnipotence. And, as Marika points out, we lack righteousnes, too. Of course, we must strive to ensure that whatever we create, we are able to say that it is "good", just as our creator described his creation.

Re: National Thank Your Commentors Day

Andrew Martin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:56:39 -0000

Aw. Thanks :-). I guess I'm into big carbon deficit right now. Hi from San Diego. I've lacked the attention span to make much in the way of comment lately. Opentabletheology has largely passed me by :-( so although I contributed a short piece, I haven't been able to weigh in on the other articles. sorry.