The Future Does Not Compute
Tue 15 Nov 2005 by Peter Edman
We’re getting ready for the revision of the forthcoming curriculum on technology after some very helpful feedback from our first pilot forum in September.
Coincidentally, Volume 75 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal arrived in my mailbox a few weeks back and its topics are salient to our revision work. In particular I found helpful a conversation that Ken Myers had with Steve Talbott, author of The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst. They talk about the way the technology we use affects the way we talk, and then the way we think. This is a very difficult subject to talk about.
In particular, computers are (necessarily?) incapable of dealing with abstracts and metaphors, but the deepest things about us are in what we cannot directly express, what comes through in the spaces between the words, the realm of scientific discovery and the spiritual life. Talbott uses the example of the phrase “love your enemies,” which says a lot to a human but its metaphor is such that any attempt to subject it to a computer translation into another language would fail miserably. Do we, then, stop using such phrases? Technology can be wonderful, but we need to make sure we do not allow it to trample the full expression of our humanity.
Overall, the conversation was very helpful in shaping my own thinking on how to express what we’re trying to accomplish with our new curriculum. If we do not have a real vision for what makes us human, for what a human being is and should be, then the technologies we use will supply one for us by their very limitations, and it will by definition be less than fully human.
Unspeakable Review
Mon 14 Nov 2005 by Peter Edman
While updating our Online Store to include a few new items, including our stock of Os Guinness’s newest book, Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror (also available from Amazon in paper) I ran across a review of it posted this past May at Victor Davis Hanson’s website. “Lost Without Faith” by Bruce Thornton.
Loconte on Pacifism
Tue 08 Nov 2005 by Peter Edman
Senior Fellow Joseph Loconte had an article in the Friday November 4 edition of the Wall Street Journal that is worth noting.
In “Peace Now: Christian pacifists ignore the true ambitions of terrorists,” Loconte, ever the equal opportunity critic, addresses the theological and practical problems attending a certain current variant of Christian pacifism, which calls for peace at all costs. Unfortunately, its unconsidered costs include truth—and logic. In addition to being essentially futile, this position is fundamentally disrespectful to the enemy as well, suggesting that terrorists and others really don’t know what they want and would quiet down if we were nicer to them:
Any religious critique of terrorism that fails to acknowledge these ambitions is deeply impoverished. It produces a political theology that helps to rationalize terrorist rage. It refuses to distinguish between the acts of murderers and the use of government force to stop them. . . .
Christians have never viewed peace as the highest good. There are other goods: protecting human dignity and restraining evil, for example. A just peace can be the final result of these pursuits, God willing. But if peace is made the supreme goal, if it consumes all other virtues, it becomes an idol—and a snare to the statesman as well as the saint.
People interested in the topic will probably find much worth pondering in Loconte’s recent book, The End of Illusions.
Loconte on Robertson and Katrina
Tue 27 Sep 2005 by Peter Edman
I was away when this came out, so just posting now.
Moderator Joseph Loconte has an op-ed (September 16, 2005) on the Tribune News Service (link here at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) discussing “Christianity’s Religion Problem.” He’s justifiably harsh on Pat Robertson, who has been serially irresponsible and demonstrably uncharitable if not unorthodox in his public views for decades. Loconte’s criticism is among the strongest I’ve seen, though I’ve not been following this debate as closely as I should. I hope he’ll get a wide hearing.
Religious leaders rightly worry about airing their dirty laundry. But Robertson has made himself a public figure—and a massive public relations problem for the church. Until more evangelicals make a visible break with him, they’ll be vulnerable to the crass caricatures that dominate media coverage of conservative religion in America.
In an intensely partisan era, with so much at stake politically, it’s tempting to simply ignore the failings of one’s allies in the culture wars. Yet without integrity, cultural influence is impossible. As the apostle Peter once warned, not so delicately, judgment begins with the family of God.
It certainly would do Mercy Ships and other positive CBN ministries good to be dissociated with their founder. Board members, please take note. The means we choose define the way we reach our ends. They shape our ends. They matter as much as any ideal future.
The Bible and Its Influence—A New Public School Text
Tue 27 Sep 2005 by Peter Edman
The Bible Literacy Project, led by TF alumnus Chuck Stetson, has released its student textbook, The Bible and Its Influence.
A teacher edition will follow. The project continues in the tradition of the Williamsburg Charter and its contributors include Charles Haynes and others familiar to us at the Trinity Forum. As someone who worked with Os Guinness on an older project, Living With Our Deepest Differences, now out of print but with similar ambitions, I’m very pleased to see something of this caliber out there.
This curriculum differs from earlier attempts in that it recognizes not just the literary and cultural influence of the Bible, but its importance as a religious text as well, and it does so while respecting but not endorsing various faith traditions and denominations. I hope it will be more influential than the Wall Street Journal is fearing. (Knight Ridder article)
Guptara Audio on Revolutionizing Business
Tue 27 Sep 2005 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Prabhu Guptara has a 90-minute lecture available online from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.
The lecture, titled “Revolutionising Business,” is available in MP3 format from this site. He addresses three questions: Is there a biblical view of business? What would the consequences be for business issues if so, at a board level? And What might this have to do with the possibility of a radically human practise of business?
Their site has several other interesting articles and lectures that may also be worth your time to peruse.
The Confidence Man
Wed 27 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Books & Culture for August 2005 features a review essay from Dr. Eugene McCarraher (hat tip: ALD).
McCarraher, in “The Confidence Man,” a pleasantly acerbic article, discusses Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption, a new book by Mark C. Taylor, who is essentially an evangelical Nietzschean.
One often wonders why some atheists feel the need to evangelize their lack of faith. At any rate, Dr. McCarraher raises some good questions about an assortment of subjects, most notably the danger that academics and others face who are too isolated (in this case by tenure) from the joys and sorrows of the material world.
What does it take to write with such insouciance about failure, suffering, and death? I don’t think it’s flippant to respond: tenure, medical insurance, and a pension, the oblivious possession of which provides the Bobo set with security to neglect some intractable material and social realities.
McCarraher also makes trenchant comments (while appreciating Taylor’s spirited defense of capitalism) on the now common techno-gnostic utopianism that Taylor falls into, which is certainly born out by my recent readings on technology.
The Future of Tradition
Fri 22 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
The Wall Street Journal has published a long but extremely thoughtful essay on “The Future of Tradition” by novelist and essayist Lee Harris (22 July 2005).
In this article, originally published in Policy Review, Harris discusses how tradition has been defended and attacked by the Enlightenment and its elites and suggests some different ways of talking about tradition that are well worth pondering—particularly for those of us in Western societies who are having difficulty maintaining our population and tradition—Italians and other Europeans, pay attention! Actually, everybody should probably pay attention to this one. The second parts of the essay are much more concrete, so skim the first section if you must, but do not miss the later discussion. Moral abstraction, he says, is not enough. Good historical context for the culture wars. Interesting discussion of the unintended consequences of Maimonides trying to defend Jewish dietary laws as if they were a health code. Fascinating discussion of language and the repsponsibilities of the elites. Read toward the end for some unexpected personal revelations by the author. Take that, Andrew Sullivan.
Basically, take the time to read this.
. . . in the view outlined here, a tradition is viable if it effectively keeps future generations from backsliding to a lower ethical or civilizational state. The track record of a tradition is irrelevant here; it may have been supremely useful in the past, but if its continuing embodiment in the rising generation begins to lower the society’s civilizational standards, the tradition must be discarded and replaced, and it makes no difference how many evolutionary challenges it may have successfully overcome in the past.
Technology Bites Back
Wed 20 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Graeme Philipson has an interesting article on technology in the Sydney Morning Herald.
He references Why Things Bite Back by Edward Tenner.
“Technology bites back,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 9, 2005:
We surround ourselves with so much digital paraphernalia and technological impedimenta that half the time we forget why we’re here. Perhaps the machines are doing us a favour when they bite us back. They remind us that technology is not infallible and very often not even necessary. It can be fun, but so can walking on the beach or playing with the dog.
Buford on Newman
Tue 12 Jul 2005 by Peter Edman
Bob Buford has sent out a passage from John Henry Newman’s sermons as recommended summer reading for his e-mail list. I thought it worth sharing with those of you who might not be on that list.
This is Newman’s Sermon 30, preached on the Feast of St. Luke, “The Danger of Accomplishments,” from his Parochial & Plain Sermons (1908). As a literature person, I take exception to a good part of the sermon—he falls prey to false dichotomies—but its overall point is well taken.
Now the danger of an elegant and polite education is, that it separates feeling and acting; it teaches us to think, speak, and be affected aright, without forcing us to practise what is right. . . .
