Monday, June 27, 2005
Ten Commandment Cases
I haven’t read through the Texas case, but I have read the majority opinion in the Kentucky case. It is clear from the reading that the history of that litigatin was the reason the court struck down the display of the Ten Commandments.
In the Kentucky case, an ordinance required a posting of the commandments. The obvious reason was to highlight the religious purposes. Suit was filed and the display of the Commandments went through various incarnations based on recent High Court decisions in an attempt to make the display constitutional.
The Court when looking at the history of the litigation found that the reason for the display was religious. However, the Court left open the caveat that the Commandments could be displayed, absent a religious motivation for the display.
I suspect that there will be historical displays that will include the Ten Commandments going forward. However, in order to pass constitutional muster, the displays will need to be enshrined with other historical documents and linked to the history of the development of law in the U.S.
Will update this once I read the Texas decision.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
testing, testing ... 1, 2, 3 testing
Sometimes you read something and it reminds you of something you used to do. The other day, I was reading a commentary on Gabriel Marcel* as I was riding the bus to work. The discussion was about Marcel’s views of the verifiability of God/faith in the latter part of his Journal Mtaphysique (which predates, I think, his conversion to Catholicism).
Here’s the bit that struck me:
“Quelles que soient les exigences de vrification postul驩es par l’incroyant ou le sceptique, mme si’l s’agit de l’incroyant ou le sceptique que le croyant trouve au fond de lui-mme, toujours il faut les faire taire, les disqualifier, car elles passent inꪩvitablement ctഩ de la ralit en jeu.” (p.110)
(rough translation: “Whatever the requirements for verification postulated by the non-believer or the sceptic might be, even if it’s a matter of the non-believer or sceptic that the believer finds deep within himself, it is always necessary to shut them up, disqualify them, because they inevitably bypass the reality in question.”
Note: although it’s clear in the original french, it isn’t clear in the english translation that the ‘they/them’in the last sentence refers to the requirements not to the unbelievers or sceptics.)
I’m not sure that I completely agree with what is said here. Sure, it’s not possible for anybody else to ‘see’ and ‘verify’ all aspects of God/faith that are experienced by another. Only we can truly know are own internal experiences. And some of us our wired differently than others. What makes sense to one person, may be complete gibberish to somebody else. And maybe it’s impossible to ‘prove’ anything about faith or God to somebody else.
But are all requests for verification disingenuous or misguided or irrelevant or simply useless in the face of the mystery inherent in God? In trying to meet the requirements of the unbeliever or sceptic (even the one that likes to live inside of me), are we always playing a futile game? Are these requirements that must be met for verification simply a wall the unbeliever or sceptic builds around himself to avoid coming face to face with the challenge of faith? Is God so ‘other’ that it is impossible for any demand for verification to be met?
I’m not going to pretend to know the answers to these questions. Coming up with questions is a lot easier than coming up with answers. But that’s okay. Not all questions need to have answers.
All that being said, good old Marcel makes a good point. Sometimes asking for verification takes you way off track. When I was first starting to believe, I had a little litmus test that I used to gauge whether or not I really thought there was a God. Looking back, it seems kind of funny. Although at the time, it wasn’t funny at all. Almost every morning, I’d ask myself if I really believed that there would still be a ‘me’ who continued to exist after I died. And most mornings, the only answer that made any sense to me was no.
At some point, I stopped asking that question. It no longer seemed that the limits of my imagination were relevant for whether or not I believed in God.
Maybe his point is that the reality of God, the ‘Toi Absolu’, as ‘subject’ and not ‘object’, really can’t be captured through any ‘test’ no matter how reliable it may be. At best you have some snippets of information about Him. And while I find Marcel, like other existentialists, a bit harsh when it comes to his treatment of thomistic philosophy, I do think he’s correct in pointing out that that the believer doesn’t love what is predicated upon God, the believer loves God. The believer loves the ‘I am Who am’ (who I still often ask to ‘prove Himself’ to me .... maybe one day I’ll learn.)
*Widmer, C. (1971) Gabriel Marcel et le th驩isme existentiel Paris:Cerf.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
The Perfect World
This article sums up well my thoughts regarding those critical of how the war in Iraq has been conducted.
Are we more brutal to our prisoners than I wish we were? Absolutely. Are we too casual to collateral damage done in the pursuit of our military objectives? Assuredly. Do too many people die in freeway accidents? Of course. Do many people die because we have inadequate healthcare for poor people? yup.
I could go on.
The issue isn’t that litany of sad facts. It’s the basic question - as I once asked concerning Niall Ferguson’s silly column - Compared to what?
In an imaginary world in which we were omnipotent, yes, none of this would happen. We could identify our opponents with perfect accuracy, and disarm and restrain them without harming anyone. Once restrained, our procedures would be firm, gentle, and correct in every degree.
We of course don’t live in an imaginary world, and are nowhere near being omnipotent. We should strive to creat that imaginary world, but we should never delude ourselves into thinking that we can acheive it.
I pretty much think that’s what we’re doing now, with a massively narrow span of error.
There have been what - 120 deaths of prisoners in Iraq? Out of perhaps 40,000 - 50,000 (I can’t find a hard number but this seems like the best I can assemble - if you have a source on this, leave it in the comments) who have been taken captive? So that’s a death rate of what - .3 percent?
1% of the German troops in Allied hands in World War II died. Some 1.3% of the Allied troops in German hands died, while 30% of the Allied troops in Japanese hands died.
Some 14.8% of the American troops held by the North Vietnamese died.
Am I happy about the .3% in Iraq? No. Not at all. Some folks on our side deserve to go to jail,and some will.
Am I happy when our troops make an error and brutalize, wound, or kill someone who doesn’t deserve it? No. But I’ll bet that we’re doing less of it than almost any army ever has in the past.
I’m happy that .3% are dying, rather than 1%. I want it to be 0%, but I recognize that we can’t achieve that level of perfection in our own jails.
Which leads me to the same conclusion as the author:
So what we have isn’t planning, it’s carping. And I use that belittling term deliberately; because they lack the courage to simply stand up and say the war is wrong, and because it’s wrong any outcome that flows from it is bad. Instead they take the very real .3% - the very real, ugly, brutal and wrong .3% - and say that “if only…”
If only doesn’t count.
What prisons would be if they were built in sound stages doesn’t count.
What war would be if John Milius and Oliver Stone wrote it doesn’t count.
quotes from http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/007043.php
Thursday, June 16, 2005
House, M.D. Trivia
Looks like Fox is going to release the first season of House on DVD on August 30th.
Cool.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
societal crises of faith?
Quoted from a science fiction novel, The Ethos Effect, by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
While much has been written about so-called crises of faith in the life cycle of individuals, what is seldom recognized, and even when so recognizedm, usually dismissed, is that societies also undergo crises of faith.
A societal crises of faith occurs when the values that produced a particular incarnation of a society no longer correspond to the values held by the individuals and organizations holding economic, political, and social power in that society. Paradoxically, these value changes seem to occur first on a social level. In reality the changes are already far advanced by the time they appear, because in most societies social standing and mobility lag behind economic and political power. Those with economic power seldom with to flaunt values at variance with social norms, and those in the political arena prefer a protective coloration that in fact straddles the perceived range of values, while ostensibly preferring the most popular of values…
Although all stable societies rest firmly on a consensus of values, invariably the individuals in those societies prefer not to discuss these values, except in glittering generalities, not because they are unimportant, but because they are so important that to discuss them seriously might open them to question and reinterpretation. Thus, the very protections of a society’s values preclude any wide-scale and public reevaluation of those values and any recognition of a potential crisis of values.
Since “morality” is the sum total of these values, the first public symptom of a crisis of values is usually a series of comments about the growing immorality of society—almost always directed at the young of a society who have absorbed what their elders are in fact doing, rather than professing…
Lots of food for thought.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Hear, hear
I usually read before going to sleep, but last night I decided to flip channels on the TV instead.
As I was flipping, I saw somebody in very recognizable attire ... the bishop of a neighbouring diocese.
I had happened upon a replay of the parliamentary hearings for the impending vote on same-sex marriage.
There were members from the Unitarian Council and the RC church making presentations.
One thing that struck me was that although there was a lot of disagreement in terms of perspectives, it was all very civil. (How Canadian, eh?)
A lot of the discussion ended up being about how much right religious voices have to make their opinions known. And the implications for tax-free status for those who enter into discussions regarding parliamentary debates.
One thing that especially struck me (and I may be showing my bias here, I don’t know) was that one member of parliament kept asking the bishop what right he had to be even making a presentation before parliament. This person did not ask the same thing of the Unitarian ministers.
The bishop pointed out that as a citizen and as somebody who is licensed to perform civil marriages, the legislation was relevant to him. (He didn’t bring scripture into play during any of the hearings.) Anyway, this little exchange was again typically Canadian, with both the bishop and the member of parliament smiling at each other and avoiding anything more than the most playful of barbs (the bishop took his collar off, followed by the member of parliament taking his tie off).
Monday, June 06, 2005
frik-frakking puters
Updating your browser is supposed to make things better not worse, isn’t it?
Netscape 8 won’t ‘hold’ my login for yahoo. It was working fine yesterday, but today it keeps asking me to login. (Well, it wasn’t working fine. It wouldn’t let me go to ‘mail’ withing the same tab I was already in. It would only work if I opened it up in a new window.)
I suppose I should clear my cookies and try again. But I decided to just go back to Netscape 7.
I could try reloading Firefox. For some reason it keeps crashing.
Basically computers don’t like me.
End of rant ...
:p
DUI Defendants Skip Charge By Asking How Test Works
From the Tampa Tribune...
SANFORD - Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown out by Seminole County judges in the past five months because the test’s manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work.
Ask for the software, get the test thrown out…
Seminole judges have been following the lead of county Judge Donald Marblestone, who in January ruled that although the information may be a trade secret and controlled by a private contractor, defendants are entitled to it.
``Florida cannot contract away the statutory rights of its citizens,’’ the judge wrote.
And the opposing view:
Judges in other counties have said the opposite: The state cannot turn over something it does not possess, and the manufacturer should not have to turn over trade secrets.
An argument in favor of Open Source Software?
I’m not sure what to make of this. However, at first glance it seems reasonable that a defendant should be able to challenge whatever evidence the state brings against him or her and it doesn’t seem right for the state to hide behind trade secrets of a third party. After all, there shouldn’t be a problem to have the software analyzed by an independent expert that must uphold the confidentiality of any trade secrets.
So, does a third-party’s trade secret trump the rights of a defendant?
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Swiss priorities.
According to this CNN story, Swiss voters are more in favo(u)r of equal rights for same-sex couples than they are of joining the EU.
About 55 percent of voters—or 1.47 million people—were in favor of joining the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone, indicating the Swiss favor closer integration with the EU—of which Switzerland is not a member.
About 58 percent of voters—or 1.56 million people—were in favor of increased rights for same-sex couples, namely that registered same-sex couples are treated the same as married couples for tax and pension purposes.
So there you have it. 
Friday, June 03, 2005
gender confusion
Why do most people on internet forums figure that I’m a guy?
Maybe I’ll have to let my hair grow longer or start wearing dresses or something to make it easier for people to tell.
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