Random Thoughts on a Monday – Adjunct from Yesterday’s Conversation with Audrey

Yesterday, I was sitting at Java, doing work on my PMI Presentation for later this month. I saw Audrey, a woman I met late last month, come through the door. Audrey is pursuing her RN, and I’ve run into her studying once or twice. I was speaking her, and asked her what she was studying. Audrey responded with “oncology.”

That took me in a new direction, and I asked her where they were finding causes for cancer. Largely, to fix a problem, one needs to find its causation. Of course, the second I asked her this, I thought and quickly changed my perspective. “Causes of cancer are like the weather, aren’t they? The systems are so complex and multi-dimensional, predicting cancer in someone is like predicting the weather a year later.” The point is to say that, like the weather, there are no linear causes for things that happen with our bodies. If there is one thing running has taught me, there is nothing so easily reduced to linear causation.

Our human minds, while incredibly intelligent, always strive to find linearity to things, when they are so much more complex and multi-dimensional than that. Quite simply, our systems are so dynamic, both with the economy, politics, weather, our bodies, etc… is there ever a way to understand root causation to such components? I am sure “Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell probably discusses this—I haven’t yet read that book. Ultimately, as we exist over expanses of time, like a Universal Field Theory for the Universe’s physics, perhaps such things we are never to know or fully understand. However, it is quite amazing, and always something to keep us continuing to try to figure it out.

Of course, as I type this, I am beckoned to Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, by Aristotle. If you’ve not read it, or don’t have the time, look it up sometime on Wikipedia. It’s tough to get around unity and oneness. What a wonder it is in which we exist.

Misguided Faith – Means for Control

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/24/evangelical.vote/index.html

It never ceases to amaze me, the way those that speak so highly about faith and the bible in public life cannot academically and respectfully disagree with another person’s challenge to their respective positions. The link above is to a CNN story about James Dobson, stating that: "I think he's [Obama] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology."

What Obama says in the speech cited from a few years ago is in the article. Please read it, and make your own judgments; however, please think about this. Is it that Obama has an issue with the bible? No, that’s not what he says.

Obama’s problem with the use of the bible in public policy is the same problem I have with it. Prior to faith being intertwined with law, that faith would have to undergo a synthesis, being transmuted from, in this case, the bible, and then written into law.

To whom do we go for such enlightenment? Who are appropriately learned in the scripture to intertwine their faith in our laws? For Dobson, I am sure he would cite maybe not himself, but other religious leaders that could be involved. Of course, who selects these leaders to be those who interpret the bible? What about those of varying faiths?

What if one day, the US, following this precedent became an Islamic state? Would it not then make sense to follow Sharia? I know; I know, the slippery slope argument is a fallacy, but please see the parallel to what Dobson is saying. In essence, opening up the bible to our interpretations and evaluations, for the purpose of jurisprudence becomes an ugly and dangerous thing.

I started to write about Con and Transubstantiation, but held off on it. The point is the argument for incorporating faith in law, when there is a constitutional framework for their separation— for good reason, holds no water. How about this: why don’t we look to the bible, like we look to Greek philosophy for object moral axioms, and apply them to law? Thereby extrapolating these simple and objective axioms into different circumstances, and applying them to case by case by case. Following an agreed decision, citing conventional wisdom and previously decided opinions, we develop a framework of laws… My goodness, I am should be a framer of Early-Modern Constitutional Law, or a philosopher like Locke, Kant, or Mills!

The point is, when someone starts to reinforce their arguments using their interpretation of their translation of sacred texts, they are working to their personal morality. I think I am better off without James Dobson’s idea of Morality; he supports Bush, who put us in a war without substantial provocation.