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President Obama, as he is wont to do, misquoted the Scripture again for political gain:

“And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

But that hasn’t been the most annoying thing about this incident. This is par for the course. I’m firmly convinced that Obama is, in fact, an atheist. An atheist sees no problem misusing the Scripture; they fear no punishment from God.

My main problem is the conservative reactions to it. These conservatives are supposed to Christians, and most of them didn’t even think to go to the actual Scripture to see if Obama used it correctly, rather than falling back on weak ad hominem arguments relying on Obama’s clear lack of divinity or making non-sequitur argument about other unrelated sayings of Jesus.

Well, I guess I should be glad at least some people had the right reaction. To recap, the context of the passage (see: Luke 12) isn’t dealing with mere material possessions; it’s dealing with our obedience to God. And what “unto whom much is given” refers to knowledge of the Law (so that we know what to obey), not any material possessions.

But really, conservatives, if they hold themselves out as Christians, well, at a minimum, they should be familiar with the Bible as Christians ought to be. Then they might even have been able to retort to the (atheist) president: “Did not the same Jesus say, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away’?” (See Luke 19.)

“And why not do evil that good may come?” —Paul of Tarsus, in a letter to the church at Rome

Or so Paul is quoted as saying. But this can’t possibly be right; Paul was the “Pharisee of Pharisees”, who regarded observance of the Laws as important above all else and (perhaps more importantly in distinction to Sadducees) feared supernatural punishment from above. And of course this quote can’t be right.

Similarly, Romney is recently quoted as saying,

“I’m not concerned about the very poor” —Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, in a televised interview with CNN

But this can’t possibly be right; to the great conservative consternation, this Massachusetts moderate upped their state’s Medicaid spending during his tenure. Why would he do that if he wasn’t concerned about the very poor? To reward state and federal bureaucrats for their support? Of course, the whole quote is, “I’m in this race because I care about Americans. I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”

But really Romney should have known better. He’s a Mormon. And it was Joseph Smith (or the Holy Spirit; but that’s a … doubtable theological point) who refused to translate a second time from the same tablet, because slanderous sinners will twist your own words (in this case, that no two translations are usually identical word-for-word) to promote unjust ends. Every word he says should have been spoken with that possibility in mind; no 5 words should be strung together if they can be taken out of context to fit the purpose of unscrupulous politicians (or particularly dull news anchors).

And of course, the quote of Romans 3:8 above ends as follows:

“…—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.”

Well, it’s a trick question. As Son of God, he would have as little regard for worldly institutions and ideologies as we have for whatever system ants have.

But apparently Bishop of Canterbury believes not only that Jesus would take a side, that he would somehow incur personal risk in doing so:

In a British magazine, the leader of the world’s 78 million Anglicans worldwide insisted that Jesus would be “there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides.”

The demonstrators pitched their tents outside the iconic cathedral in mid-October to protest what they see as the unfairness and illegalities of the global financial community.

In his article written for the Christmas edition of the Radio Times magazine, the archbishop said Jesus was “constantly asking awkward questions” in the Bible.

In the St. Paul’s encampment, Williams added, Jesus would be “steadily changing the entire atmosphere by the questions that he asked of everybody involved — rich and poor, capitalist and protester and cleric.”

The archbishop said that when Jesus said “give Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” he was asking “what’s the exact point at which involvement in the empire of capitalist economy involves you fatally.”

Let’s ignore all the inaccuracies and possible heresy by the bishop (does he not believe in absolute deity of Jesus Christ? Does he believe Jesus was only a man, if he was a historical figure at all?), and focus on his interpretation of the “Render unto Caesar” passage. The entire quote is: “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”, in response to the trap question posed to Jesus asking, essentially, whether Romans had a right to rule the Judea.

This is a perfectly ambiguous passage that is open to many different interpretations (as Jesus’ primary intent was to give an ambiguous response, the setup of the trap being that whether he answered “yes” or “no” on the matter of Roman taxation, he would have faced political trouble), but one thing it does not address is the matter of capitalism (that is, market economy governed through use of a monetary instrument) and communism (that is, some societal structure where money—which is the primary point Jesus does bring up; the face on the money is that of Caesar—has no role).

But let’s pretend that it does and see whither such an assumption takes us. Jesus’ response is, literally, since the money is Caesar’s (i.e. the government’s), give it to Caesar, and give to God what is his. He does not make it clear exactly what is “things that are God’s”; in the narrowest scope, he could mean temple sacrifices (being made with God’s creatures) or, well, our entire being—time, devotion, etc.

Now, what is the real difference between a capitalist system and communist system? The difference is emphatically not that the government makes no demands of us in either case (that would be the difference between government and anarchy, not different systems of government). It’s the form of demand made on us. In a capitalist system, government primarily demands money from us—that, according to Jesus, we can give freely without feeling spiritually conflicted; it’s only money.

What would a communist government demand of us? It would demand first labor—that is, our time (and possibly devotion). Whereas a capitalist system cannot crowd out God (it can only demand the money we have; we can always take a vow of poverty so that we can devote ourselves better to God), a communist government can crowd out God by demanding so much of us, since there is not intermediary agency of money. And incidentally, historically, it always has, at least when a communist government existed for a length of time in a geographical region.

So, it ought to be self-destructive for the bishop to rail against the monetary system; it’s the monetary system that prevents worldly authorities from choking the spiritual life out of us. That is, well, if the bishop cared about our spiritual well-being, not his political influence—but then, I’m reminded of that one Yes, Prime Minister episode …

I stumbled upon this proof of 1 Corinthians 13:13 while trying to brush up on my programming (ipython interpreter is used for this, and you can actually see it tried here):

In [1]: max('faith','hope','love')
Out[1]: 'love'

It’s an answer given by a computer, so it must be right.

(In seriousness, though, if you are wondering what’s going on, try evaluating “max(‘faith’,'hope’,'agape’)” on Python. Of course, it could just be that Python doesn’t speak Greek …)

This tile was in front of the monument for Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey.

I have to say, I didn’t quite expect to see it, mainly for the reason that, by anecdotes, Dirac was an atheist.

And I’m shamed to say I didn’t recognize the Dirac equation, at least not while I was looking at it (for some reason, I kept trying to link it to something I learned in nonrelativistic QM). Well, in my defense, I’ve never taken formal QFT … and chances are I won’t.

Also, I’ve been meaning to put up photos from my London trip; well, it’s going to take a while; I’ll back-date the posts to match the date of the trip.

As I’ve said before, I began reading “Reason for God”, as a part of NCB winter break book club thing.

Well, I’m finally done with the book (as of last week), and I can make … general comments about the book—which is great because that’s all I have the time for at the moment.

So the book is broken into two parts. In the first part, Rev. Keller breaks down secularist arguments by arguing, (1) moral relativism (which is essentially the basis of secularism) is internally inconsistent: relativism doesn’t provide enough ground for the tenets of relativism itself, (2) doubt applies to everything; both to the Christian faith and non-believing atheism.

In the second part, Keller tries to provide the argument for Christianity—why it might be true (given the arguments given in first part, we concede that it’s not possible to prove a belief beyond all doubt—or perhaps even reasonable doubt), and why one might want it to be true.

To be blunt, I find the first part far more convincing than the second part. As I read Rev. Keller’s argument for Christianity, as a natural skeptic (but you all know that I put my skepticism to rest on certain aspects), I keep finding myself in the Devil’s advocate’s position, arguing counter-points and alternate plausible explanations that does not involve God or Jesus Christ (like a good lawyer or mathematician, I don’t have to believe in arguments that I advance; if I couldn’t do that, I would have to give up pretending to be a sophist). In contrast, I found myself mostly agreeing with Rev. Keller in the first half; it’s far much easier to agree that skeptical points of views he offered in the first half are reasonable than to agree that the options Rev. Keller is left with in the second half are indeed the only choices left for a reasonable person.

But through both the first and the second part, here’s one argument Rev. Keller makes for Christianity (that I’ve also seen Pastor Allan make, I think last week) that I do find compelling. Christian Bible, especially New Testament, is a true account, at least to the best knowledge of authors and as well as it has been transmitted to us (as verified by agreements between a number of papyri and archeological evidences), and here’s the reason why: the accounts in the gospels are so embarrassing (e.g. Peter denying Jesus three times) and so counter-productive (e.g. women, who didn’t count for much at the time, being the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection) that one wouldn’t make up things like that as propaganda. In fact, the only reason one would even tell such a story is because it is true and one feels obliged to tell the truth.

I found the very last chapter a little … too mysterious for me, but other than that, the book provides plenty of food for thought. In the end, there’s no guarantee that it will convince a non-believer—or even a seeker—or that it will not derail a supposed Christian, but one would be better off for having read this book than not.

Nationar Review has 2010 predictions by their authors. My favorites:

• Most likely to come true (non-political): “Science: A more or less Earth-like planet will be observed in a more or less Earth-like orbit around a more or less Sun-like star.”
• Most likely to come true (political): “Chris Dodd loses his election. Capital police need to use a crowbar to loosen his grip on his office desk. ”
• Funniest crack: “North Korea: Kim Jong Il will be deposed by his military. (Yes, it’s true, I cut’n’pasted that from last year’s predictions. It’s bound to happen one year soon, though, unless the little toad dies first.) ”
• Most sobering: “The GOP will not take back the House. But it will be very, very close.”
• Most typical: “The economy will improve, despite the best efforts of the Democrats to weight it down with more regulations and the promise of future taxes. The Democrats will take credit for the improvement, the Republicans will dismiss the growth as inadequate, positions which would be exactly reversed should the parties’ relative political positions also be reversed.”

As for myself, I only have resolutions, same as 2009, to learn to use and own a gun and to meet minimum Marine corp selection criteria. The difference would be, well, I am more resolved and in the case of the second resolution, I have more time as well. Since I am not in the future-telling business, I will just leave with this quote from the wisest man that ever lived:

There is a time for everything,
   and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,
   a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,
   a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
   a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
   a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,
   a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,
   a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,
   a time for war and a time for peace.

What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

The College Life group at New Church Berkeley wanted to do something to keep in touch over the winter break, so we are reading the book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller.

I’m just through the first chapter, and well, it’s an interesting read (I’ll have more to say once I’m done reading). At the moment, I guess I have a few points on which I think I disagree with Rev. Keller: the point of view that says every religion is equally right, that they represent different parts of the Truth (coupled with the elephant and blind men analogy) does not need to be coming from a position of arrogance (i.e. that you somehow know that Truth is bigger than any of these religions). It can be a simple logically consistent position that begins from a simple assumption: “Every religion is correct to the extent of what they claim.” Given the contradictions and disagreements between these religions, the only way this assumption can be true is if there are significant areas where these religions … do not overlap as far as Truth is concerned.

Of course, how one arrives at that assumption (is it out of charity and assumption of goodness of religions? or is it as to arrive at the conclusion which diminishes every religion equally?) is a different question, but direct assumption of a view at greater truth is not … required.

Anyways. Aside from this, I guess there are some areas where I don’t feel quite comfortable (“social justice”; when it means anything other than voluntary private charity, it’s a great tool for ambitious statists), but I’ll have more to say after I’m done.

This is why I don’t trust the religious right:

I’m not terribly surprised by that outcome. The USCCB isn’t exactly a hotbed of libertarian thought. The only surprise in this chapter of ObamaCare is that the bishops stood so strongly against the bill in the first place. Most of them believe in a collective health-care approach rather than a free market, with a few notable exceptions. That’s one reason to remember that their wisdom generally remains limited to the spiritual rather than the temporal in terms of political thought.

Their goal is different from ours. Their goal is to impose their interpretation of the scripture (which may or may not be correct; I contend that they are … mistaken in substantial details, especially with regard to how charity work should be done) on the rest of the society. Our goal is individual liberty—defending institutions which are set up to defend this ultimate goal, and tearing down institutions which erode them.

From time to time, we may form alliances of convenience. But that’s all that is. They are ready to betray our conservative values the moment they think they can get something germane to their own goals accomplished, as they have now. We should never forget that.

The first commandment says,

Do not put any other gods in place of me.

Because this command is stated in negative terms, it is easy to misunderstand it as something that restricts our choice—a choice, if we were to make freely and rationally in full possession of the complete information, that we might make differently. But a deeper reading into this commandment should reveal that this is as much a “negative command” as our constitutional rights are “negative rights” (such as one that says that Congress may not make laws restricting speech).

An equivalent way to state this command is this: “No other god will have power over you.” Considering what other (false) gods were around at the time, I would take this commandment more as a promise of protection than an actual command. This commandment is more liberating than it is binding.

This statement is repeated in the New Testament as well:

“Come to me, all of you who are tired and are carrying heavy loads. I will give you rest. Become my servants and learn from me. I am gentle and free of pride. You will find rest for your souls. Serving me is easy, and my load is light.”

(Some older translations refer to “yoke”, which I thought was better for the imagery.)

Of course, by this time human sacrifice (as required by some pagan religions) had become a faded chapter of history. But the burden asked for in Christianity has proportionally gone down as well (“… each according to his ability …”). So it still remains, compared to the yokes of other preoccupations, religious or secular, the yokes of Christianity is lighter, and if the latter excludes the former, then by bearing the yokes of Christianity (or, more directly, the First Commandment), we become free of the heavier burden.