A Thinking Reed

Month: July 2008

  • A follow up on rights for apes

    Christopher wonders what I think about the Spanish Parliament’s recent move toward granting “the right to life, the freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty, and protection from torture” to great apes.

    I touched on this briefly here, but that was mainly in the course of responding to William Saletan’s contention that animal equality of the sort supposedly favored by animal liberationists would be undermined by what he sees as a kind of creeping equality between humans and our nearest animal kin as a result of scientific discoveries. My point there was that “equality” in the sense favored by animal liberationists means the equal right of animals to have their interests –precisely as the kind of beings they are–taken into account. It doesn’t mean that animals all have the same interests, much less that human beings and animals would, in an animal liberationist utopia, have “equal rights.”

    That said, I am broadly sympathetic to the aims of the Great Ape Project, if a little fuzzy on how these rights would be specified in law. As I read it, the underlying principle is that, with regard to these creatures, our general rule of thumb ought to be to do no harm and to enshrine a more or less hands-off policy. That makes sense to me: there’s really no good reason for us to keep great apes in captivity, to experiment on them, or to kill them (at least in so far as they don’t threaten vital human interests; at the margin there are always bound to be some conflicts between humans and animals, even if just in competition for resources).

    There is arguably a case to be made for using apes in certain medical experiments given their similarity to human beings. But, in my judgment, the elimination or amelioration of some human diseases isn’t sufficient to justify imprisoning and experimenting on our cousins. This is where the much-discussed “argument from marginal cases” comes into play: we wouldn’t think it’s ok to use infants, or the severely mentally disabled as subjects in medical experiments, but great apes meet or exceed the mental capacity of at least some of these human subjects. So what makes it ok to use them? At the very least, the burden of proof is on would-be experimenters to show that there are no available alternatives.

    The most common counterargument is usually that humans just count for more. But it’s possible to concede this and yet deny that our greater value gives us license to turn other creatures–particularly intelligent, social ones–into tools for use. If we really are worth more, than maybe the best way to show it is by being merciful to those over whom we have such great power. Incidentally, lest I be accused of diminishing the value of human life in order to raise the value of (non-human) animal life, I’d apply the same general principles to things like experimenting on human embryos. To use them as resources for experiments and medical treatment is, essentially, to deny them any non-instrumental value.

    I am a little puzzled, along with the writer of the article Christopher links to, why Spain of all places would make this a priority since, it seems, there currently are no experiments being performed on apes there. After all, their national sport involves the bloody and pointless killing of bulls. Why not outlaw that?

  • Dogma and prayer

    I think I mentioned a week or so ago that I’d been reading Anglican theologian Austin Farrer’s Saving Belief. Well, I just finished another work of his called Lord I Belive: Suggestions for Turning the Creed Into Prayer, and it’s another great read.

    Farrer argues that “prayer and dogma are inseparable” (p. 9). To be a Christian is not just to coolly consider the truths of the faith, but to incorporate them into one’s innermost self. And the best way to do this is to incorporate the dogmas of the church into one’s prayer. The creed, as a summary of Christian belief, is the ideal guide for this, because it gives us an image of God and his dealings with us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

    Though God be in me, yet without the creed to guide me I should know neither how to call upon God, nor on what God to call. God may be the very sap of my growth and substance of my action; but the tree has grown so crooked and is so deformed and cankered in its parts, that I should be at a loss to distinguish the divine power among the misuses of the power given. Were I to worship God as the principle of my life, I should merely worship myself under another name, with all my good and evil. So I take refuge in that image of God which we have described as branded from outside upon the bark. Here is a token I can trust, for he branded it there himself; he branded it on the stock of man when he stretched out his hands and feet and shed his precious blood. The pattern of the brand was traced on me by those who gave the creed to me; God will deepen it and burn it into me, as I submit my thoughts to him in meditation. (p. 14)

    This strikes me as very Lutheran with its emphasis on the word that comes from outside ourselves, and in its emphasis on the importance of meditating on the creed. Luther, of course, commended this as one of the main parts of his Small Catechism.

    Farrer’s remaining chapters provide expositions/meditations of the various parts of the creed, each one culminating in a prayer. They show the mark of the same generous orthodoxy that characterized Saving Belief. Finally, there is a chapter on the Rosary called “The Heaven-Sent Aid,” where Farrer commends it as one of the best ways to meditate on the mysteries of our faith:

    If I had been asked two dozen years ago for an example of what Christ forbade when he said “Use not vain repetitions,” I should very likely have referred to the fingering of beads. But now if I wished to name a special sort of private devotion most likely to be of general profit, prayer on the beads is what I should name. Since my previous opinion was based on ignorance and my present opinion is based on experience, I am not ashamed of changing my mind. Christ did not, in fact, prohibit repitition in prayer, the translation is false; he prohibited gabbling, whether we repeat or whether we do not. Rosaries, like any other prayers, can be gabbled, and if they are gabbled, they will certainly not be profitable. Devout persons who take to the beads as a way of meditating are not likely to gabble, for their object is to meditate. (p. 80)

    Farrer’s book is a good illustration of what I was trying to get at in emphasizing the importance of dogma in yesterday’s post. The soul needs something concrete to feed on, and to lead it to God. Yes, if we’re honest, we’ll admit that our dogma and doctrine provide a blurred and incomplete picture of the divine nature. But we also trust that they’re reliable pointers that will lead us deeper into that inexhaustible Truth.

  • Thought for the day

    The issue before us is to discover or determine what we are, and what we are for. Traditional believers–among whom I count myself–suppose that there are answers to those questions, and that they can be found by prayerful examination of the Word of God in Scripture–and the world. Less traditional believers, reacting against the follies that have often been taught as gospel, believe instead that the answers are not for us to discover, but rather to decide. The question is not (for them) about our present world, but about the world to come, and its coming rests on human enterprise. Humanity is a bridge between the unmeaning world of brute biology and the future happy world of human artifice. I am myself less optimistic about the sort of world that human beings, unaided, will create, but also less enthralled by any present order than conservative believers are. It is precisely because I think our nature is imperfect that I distrust the plans of those who would remake it. Conversely, it is because I catch occasional glimpses of a redeemed humanity that I can believe we are not bound for ever within the circles of this world. — Stephen R.L. Clark, Biology and Christian Ethics, pp. 7-8

  • Friday metal – more Swedish goodness

    Okay, I know I posted a video from these guys a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve been digging into the Soilwork back catalog, so you’re going to get some more:

    “As We Speak”

    “Stabbing the Drama”

    “Nerve”

  • Affirming liberalism (and conservatism)

    There’s a newish Church of England group calling itself “Affirming Liberalism” that, I gather, is kind of like Affirming Catholicism, but not tied to a particular form of churchmanship.

    In any event, the webiste has some interesting articles, including this one from Keith Ward called (perhaps optimistically) “Why the Future Belongs to Liberal Faith.” Ward’s is talking specifically about holding the Christian faith in a liberal way, and he identifies seven marks of a liberal faith:

  • Christians enjoy freedom from the absolute authority of any written text, including the Bible
  • The church should include different interpretations of the Christian faith
  • People should be free to dissent from any human authority, including the church
  • The search for truth is best served by critical discussion and inquiry
  • Faith is a relation of trust in a person more than an affirmation of propositional truths
  • Religious belief may need to be re-evaluated in light of new knowledge from other areas
  • The church exists to serve the world and contribute to the flourishing of all creation, both material and spiritual

    • Now, I substantially agree with all these points, so why would I be uncomfortable describing myself as a theological liberal? I think it’s because, while I affirm the need for critical discussion, acceptance of diversity and dissent, and the possibility of revising traditional theological beliefs, I still think there is a core of orthodox Christian belief that retains, if not unchallengable authority, then at least a strong presumption in its favor.

    I don’t think Ward would necessarily disagree with this if his other writings are anything to judge by. But I think his article is nicely balanced by this passage from one by Mark Chapman at the same site:

    I want to begin with the bold claim that a certain amount of woolly liberalism is necessary for the functioning of a healthy Christianity. This is something that needs to be re-asserted in the contemporary church, particularly when there are so many who would like to confine Christianity solely to its more dogmatic and sectarian forms. And I would contend that the reason for this is extraordinarily simple and uncontentious: whatever else religion might be it is a human practice open to all the distortions of human sin which means it simply demands to be scrutinised and criticised. That is something that would be understood by the Hebrew prophets and virtually every reformer since. For the greater glory of God there is thus a responsibility to open up our practices and beliefs to critical scrutiny. This, I think, is where a dose of liberalism becomes necessary for all Christians. Liberalism is consequently far more an attitude of mind than a church party, and it can even look prophetic.

    Now, I would not want to belong to anything called a liberal party in the church. My religion is really quite traditional Anglo-Catholic, but my disposition and attitude is liberal. It doesn’t take much to reveal the ironies, hypocrisies and idolatries of Anglo-Catholicism. But at the same time the continued vitality of religion requires that it be practised, cherished and loved and approached with reverence and awe.

    The “liberal” and “conservative” dispositions, then, can be seen as complementary, and even necessary for one another’s health. A merely corrosive and critical liberalism will lack “reverence and awe.” But an uncritical conservatism will confuse religion with God, and ironically fail to revere the very God religion aims to worship.

  • The (carbon) taxman cameth

    Spurred in part by this post from John, I was thinking a bit about carbon taxes vs. cap-and-trade as methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Googling around a bit I found this article from the New York Times on the different experiences of countries that have actually implemented a carbon tax:

    But a carbon tax isn’t a new idea. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have had carbon taxes in place since the 1990s, but the tax has not led to large declines in emissions in most of these countries — in the case of Norway, emissions have actually increased by 43 percent per capita. An economist might say this is fine; as long as the cost of the environmental damage is being internalized, the tax is working — and emissions might have been even higher without the tax. But what environmentalist would be happy with a 43 percent increase in emissions?

    The one country in which carbon taxes have led to a large decrease in emissions is Denmark, whose per capita carbon dioxide emissions were nearly 15 percent lower in 2005 than in 1990. And Denmark accomplished this while posting a remarkably strong economic record and without relying on nuclear power.

    What did Denmark do right? According to the article, rather than treating the new tax as a cash cow to fund all kinds of nifty new programs, they plowed the revenue back into environment-friendly innovations. The government had also already invested heavily in the development of clean energy, making it easier for industries to switch over.

    I don’t know how applicable this would be to the US, but in light of some of the concerns John raises in his post about special interest capture under a cap-and-trade scheme, I wonder if a straight-up tax might not be more preferable. It would also, as I suggested in a comment to his post, jive a bit better with the principle–usually embraced by conservatives and libertarians–that you should take responsibility for your actions and externalities should be internalized as much as possible. No doubt better (and wonkier) minds than mine have already considered this.

  • The worst kind of cocktail party – one with no booze

    Marvin, Jonathan, and Jennifer have been going around a bit about some of the same issues I talked about here regarding Christians, patriotism, politics, and Stanley Hauerwas. Now, unlike these three, I’ve never formally studied theology, much less under the man himself, so I always feel a little underqualified jumping into these discussions. But, fools rush in…

    I agree with Jennifer’s point that there are lots of ways of being “political” that can’t simply be reduced to voting and conventional political activism. Moreover, she’s right to point a finger at the mainline: all too often mainline Protestantism assumes the shape of a vaguely religious humanism that seeks to usher in utopia through political activism, seemingly willing to replace the gospel of Christ with the UN Millenium Development Goals.

    But Marvin gets at what I was trying (rather long-windedly) to say when he says in a comment on Jennifer’s post:

    the same scriptures that call the Church to be a different polis demand respect for the Emperor while ascribing fear to God, and demand subjection to the governing authorities while acknowledging the Lordship of Christ. The family, the corporation and the state do have legitimate claims on us. Subordinate to the claims of Christ and his Church, to be sure, but legitimate claims. Hauerwas frankly has nothing to say about how to do this balancing act, and this is the crucial pastoral theology issue of our time. How do you be a faithful Christian when you’re also a cog in the machine?

    I think there are resources in the Christian tradition for addressing this issue–concepts like natural law, vocation, “orders of creation” and so on–which have long been endorsed by mainstream Christians. But these are also the very things the “Hauerwas school” have railed against for downplaying or sacrificing Christian distinctiveness.

    My view, though, is that these are still useful approaches, even if they might need retooled a bit (e.g. a version of natural law that takes evolution seriously; a concept of vocation that doesn’t reinforce the status quo). There are resources out there for this which, as far as I can tell, the churches haven’t made a great deal of use of. But I do think they provide a more promising way forward.

  • More on the churches and patriotism

    After reading this comment thread over at Chris’ blog, it ocurred to me that there might be a communication breakdown of sorts between mainline Protestant and evangelical responses to the quote from Stanley Hauerwas under discussion.

    When Hauerwas first started churning out his jeremiads, they were aimed primarily at the liberal mainline establishment that, in his view, had compromised itself in taking “responsibility” for American society. But now, it seems that he’s finding a lot of readers among American evangelicals who find him a bracing antidote to the uncritical nationalism of a lot of their churches.

    To a large extent, these two groups may have very different experiences of what it means to be a church in American society. For instance, I’ve never been a member of a church that traffics in the kind of uncritical nationalism that others seem to be referring to here; if anything, the churches I’ve attended have no problem recounting the litany of American evil. Plus, I’m well-acquainted with secular critiques of American exceptionalism, nationalism, and military intervention; so hearing that God’s kingdom isn’t to be identified with the Pax Americana doesn’t exactly comes as shocking news. Becuase of that I tend to focus on what I see as the dangers of quietism and churcholatry arising from Hauerwas’ perspective. But if I was an evangelical I might have a very different impression.

    In light of this conversation I was particularly attuned to any potential nationalistic overtones at church this morning. I worship at an ELCA church that is definitely left-of-center, but also has many congregants who work for the government, non-profits, are in the military, etc. (The church is on Capitol Hill just a few blocks from our place.) The pastor’s sermon, as far as I was concerned, struck just the right notes. He talked, based on the gospel passage, about how Jesus’ yoke being “easy” means that it is perfectly fitted for us. He then went on to talk about how the American colonists threw off the yoke of the British Empire in order to craft a “yoke” based on human rights, democracy, and opposition to monarchical power.

    We are, he said, inheritors of that legacy which carries with it a responsibility to extend those blessings more consitently throughout our society. But beyond this, he went on, is our higher loyalty to Jesus’ more excellent way of agapic love. What we do as citizens of a republic must be set in the context of our allegiance to Jesus and the way of being in the world that he pioneered.

    We did sing “America the Beautiful,” but we closed with this song, which one would, I think, be hard pressed to identify with jingoistic nationalism:

    This is my song, O God of all the nations,
    A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
    This is my home, the country where my heart is;
    Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
    But other hearts in other lands are beating
    With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

    My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
    And sunlight beams on clover-leaf and pine.
    But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
    And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
    Oh, hear my song, O God of all the nations,
    A song of peace for their land and for mine.

    I quite like this vision of patriotism. We can love our country and have a special responsibility for it because its ours, not because we think it’s better than everyone else’s. And we can recognize that other people love their homelands too, and that this shouldn’t be an obstacle to peace between nations. It appeals to my “little Americaner” sensibilities (or whatever the proper analogue of a “Little Englander” is).

    At any rate, though, I think this illustrates my point about different experiences of what it means to be a church in America and how to relate to the larger society.

  • The limits of Pollanism

    UPDATE: Now with links!

    The current issue of the American Conservative, in addition to featuring John‘s very cool cover story on “conservative cuisine” (which I may blog about later), carries Rod “Crunchy Con” Dreher’s interview with Michael Pollan. This passage, where Dreher tries to draw a connection between Pollan’s “organic” conception of the environment and an organic conception of human society, caught my attention:

    DREHER: What about human society as an organism? Many people think of Wendell Berry as a man of the Left because he criticizes humankind’s unnatural exploitative relationship to agriculture and the environment, but Berry has argued on similar grounds against the indvidualist sexual ethic pervasive in contemporary culture. Is he on to something?

    POLLAN: Berry’s on to a lot of things. He’s a very wise man. Is he Right or Left? Those categories don’t fit him. He is a fierce critic of capitalism because he sees it destroying community, destroying traditional sexual relationships, destroying family. I agree with a lot of that, but not all.

    There is a blind spot in a lot of contemporary conservatism–not understanding that while capitalism can be a very constructive force, it can also be very destructive of things that conservatives value.

    DREHER: It’s also a blind spot of contemporary liberalism to fail to see how pursuing a sort of autonomous individualism when it comes to social forms undermines a community in the same way that capitalism does.

    POLLAN: That’s right. The Left can be blind to that possibility also.

    Now Pollan, being a good liberal, backs away somewhat from this idea, and with good reason – excessively “organic” conceptions of society tend to be quite illiberal. While everyone to the left of Margaret Thatcher agrees that our well-being is intimately tied up with our social context, traditional organic conceptions of society go much further than this.

    The question, in essence, is whether individuals exist for the sake of society or whether societies exist for the benefit of their members. The former tended to be the pre-modern view, while the latter is more a result of a post-Enlightenment outlook. While any society may, under certain circumstances, call upon members to make sacrifices for its well-being (in times of war, say), a strong “social holism” sees the value of individuals as being entirely, or almost entirely, constituted by the contribution they make to the whole. This, in turn, has justified routinely sacrificing the interests of some group for the putative sake of the the well-being of the whole. For instance, keeping a permanent class of slaves might be justified on the grounds that it enabled a society to reach an otherwise unattainable level of art and culture.

    Meanwhile, moderns generally see society as something that can, and should, be reformed in the interests of its members. Slavery is wrong, we think, because it permanently subordinates the interests of one group of people to others, regardless of what social goods it may or may not be conducive to. Likewise, over the centuries, the institution of marriage has been modified in light of widespread beliefs that it was hampering the well-being and happiness of various groups of people. Marriage based on property interest was challenged by marriage based on personal happiness. Patriarchial marriage was challenged by feminists. Exclusively heterosexual marriage is being challenged by gays and lesbians. And so on.

    The underlying idea here is that social institutions exist in order to allow people to flourish and can be modified accordingly; people don’t exist for the sake of social institutions. You might even say that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

    But, as Dreher suggests, an “organicist” way of thinking isn’t entirely foreign to Pollan’s outlook. Take, for instance, his discussion of animal rights in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan complains about the “individualism” of an animal rights movement that is concerned exclusively about the suffering and well-being of individual animals:

    [T]he animal rightist concerns himself only with individuals. […] [Peter] Singer [insists] that only sentient individuals can have interests. But surely a species has interests–in its survival, say, or the health of its habitat–just as a nation or a community or a corporation can. Animal rights’ exclusive concern with the individual might make sense given its roots in a culture of liberal individualism, but how much sense does it make in nature? Is the individual animal the proper focus of our moral concern when we are trying to save an endangered species or restore a habitat? (p. 323)

    Now, I don’t know about you, dear reader, but that “surely a species has interests” looks to me like it’s stealing a few argumentative bases. In fact, it’s far from obvious to me that a species has interests and I have a hard time seeing why the goods Pollan refers to couldn’t be secured by focusing on indvidual animals. After all, don’t individual animals have interests in survival and in the health of their habitat? What is gained, exactly, by positing an additional entity – the species – that has interests over and above the interests of its members?

    Pollan here seems to be expressing sympahty with the ecological analogue of social holism, a view usually traced back to Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” where an action is right when “it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” This ecological holism, like its social counterpart, locates value in the whole, with the value of individuals playing a subordinate role.

    In my view, the problem with ecological holism, like social holism, is that it can all too easily justify the sacrifice of sentient creatures for the alleged benefit of the whole. After all, if the value of individuals consists in their contribution to the whole, their interests don’t carry any weight apart from whatever contribution they may or may not make. Instead of being concerned with individuals, it gives overriding precedence to the whole. This is why Tom Regan dubbed ecological holism – perhaps unfairly – “eco fascism.”

    Fortunately, hardly anyone actually adheres to the strong versions of social or ecological holism that would deny any intrinsic value to individuals, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Pollan does. Nevertheless, there is a real opposition between pre-modern social organicism and ecological holism on the one hand, and post-Enlightenement social ethics and animal liberation on the other which focus on the well-being of individuals. The former give precedence to the “stability” and “integrity” of the whole, while the latter focus on the interests of individuals. Both the traditional pre-modern conservative and the ecological holist can tend toward the affirmation that “Whatever is, is right.” We see Pollan doing this when he justifies meat-eating as “natural,” as though morality doesn’t often require us to do things that are “unnatural.”

    I don’t think it’ll come as a shock to anyone if I put my cards on the table and say that, at least in this case, I’m with the small-l liberals, animal rightists, and other post-Enlightenment philosophies. Which is not to say that there aren’t legitimate critiques of these philosophies – especially in their more extreme individualist forms. Certainly, part of an individual’s value lies in her role in community and the good of the whole can, in particular instances, trump the good of an individual, but, overall, a community has to be judged by the extent to which it enables its members to lead flourishing, satisfying lives.

  • Saturday metal – Independence Day edition (one day late)

    Iced Earth, “Declaration Day”

    (Yes, the line “freedom is not free” actually occurs in the song. And I have no idea what that freaky animation’s all about.)