On Critisism

The last few days I have spent some time looking at critiques of various writers, and several on G.K. Chesterton have set me wondering as to how we can make an objective critique of a writer, mainly because there are some writers I dislike almost as intensly as some seem to hate Tolkien and Chesterton. After some thought, here is what I have come up with.



You cannot dismiss someone's arguments simply by saying they are not a trained philosopher or scientist. In the past, and a little today, people educate themselves. If someone has made stupid mistakes, it will take little or no effort to point out said mistakes. If you want to dethrone someone from a wrongly held seat of cultural authority, show what is wrong with their work, and how that corrupts what they have to say.



It is not enough however, to prove them wrong by showing how it conflicts with your beliefs. The two places that philosophies and worldviews can destroy themselves by having conflicts. If an idea conflicts with itself, or how the world works, then it can be viewed as false. Too often ideas are dismissed because they do not fit a belief system they are attempting to challenge simply because that belief system is the one held by the reviewer.

The problem is that it is difficult to show where an idea conflicts with how the world works, but if there were no problem, philosophy would not be fun.

Christianity v. Life

I have been looking at a lot of different books and blogs about and by atheists and christians, and I have to say that the amount of weight given to the study of plants and animals is far out of proportion to it's actual importance. Despite the fact that most of our construction of 'pre-history' is based on falicious assumptions and straight up guess work, it is still treated as the irrefutable refutation of theism in general and Christianity in particular. The fact is that such pre historical guestimating is far less important than what the world is doing now, or within the last two hundred years.

The fact is that Christianity fits reality better than any other belief system. You can say that we can have morality without God because we have no need of logic, that life is illogical and thus has no meaning (using logic to prove such), but the fact is that people living their lives know that logic and reason are basic pieces of how life works. No one has ever lived their life without logic and no one ever will.

You can say that Christianity is cruel and causes people guilt, but it also gives them redemtion, while aethism gives people dispaire and leave them in it. Christianity has a problem of evil only when you demand that God be accountable for everything and man for nothing, but when man becomes responsible for his actions, the problem vanishes. Evil is still there, it is still painful, but it is not a permanent part of the cosmos as it is in aethism or eastern philosophies. You can say, as Budhism does, that good and evil, peace and war, life and death, are all the same, but people do not live that way.

You can say that we are chance products of matter and that thoughts and emotions are simply chemical reactions in the brain, but again, people simply don't live that way. Some people may find it convenient to blame behavior on such chemical reactions, but the theory undercuts itself by denying man's ability to theorize.

You can say that what we do doesn't matter, that it will all vanish, but man cannot live that way, and those who have tried usually end up blowing out their brains. Life and man only make sense in Christianity. Why are we continually amazed by how fast or slow time moves? Why can we not simply accept murder and rape as good? Why are we sad when people die? Why are we consumed with love, burn with hate, sink in despair, or rise in joy? Why do our hearts leap at the sound of the horns of Rohan as the Witchking stands at the gate of Gondor? Why do tears start to our eyes as random people pay their respects as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl escorts the body of PFC Chance Phelps home from the Iraq War?

Before people bash Christianity for being "full of contradictions" (Which are usually idiotic readings of the scripture that a six year old can understand), they might want to look at the bleakness of their own beliefs, and look at the hundreds of ways that such beliefs simply do not fit reality.

Hurrah for Good Old Southern Manners (and guns)

In my Arthurian Literature class this week, we have been discussing Chivalry (how you act as a warrior) and Courtly Love (How you act as a lover) in the romances of Chretian de Troyes. Most of the young men in the class still open doors for ladies and give up their seats on the bus (To be fair, there were a good number of Corps people there). What was interesting was the small number of girls who would want their boyfriend to be a 'courtly lover', a grand total of zero. I think the reason was the impression that such a friend would be a push over. Maybe, maybe not, I have no experiance in that area so I can't talk much lest I set my foot firmly in my mouth.

What I can talk about a little, and was slightly disappointed we did not discuss, was Chivalry, a code of conduct for combat. If they have no code of conduct, are you still bound by one? Obviously there are boundaries, i.e. if they use human shields or launch missles from hospitals you can't do it either. However, the practice of taking prisoners is dependent to a large degree on the assumption that the prisoner will not suddenly blow up in your face or pull a knife when you turn your back.

Also, in combatives this morning we learned something very interesting. Who always wins an unarmed fight?

The guy who's buddy with a gun shows up first.

Fiction

I would highly encourage all of you to read Martin Cothran's article 'The Rhetoric of Amazement', I think he is spot on in what he is saying. I would like to add just a few thoughts of my own.

Fiction, and Fantasy in particular, has been attacked as escapist, full of lies, and not worth our time, etc. Much of this stems from the pragmatism that has become the trademark of modern times. Like everything else, fantasy can be good and bad, but it is not bad because it is fantasy.

Fantasy is an instrument that allows the author or creator to do two things. The primary joy that Tolkien and many other Fantasy writers had from their work was the joy of creating. It is the same joy that God felt when he made heaven and earth, and it is a reflection of his image in us. Also, fantasy is and always has been, a tool to explore and make moral points. Until recently, if you wanted to know how to or not to act you looked at heroes and villians in legends. You followed the example of Hector, Beowulf, Diomedes, Sir Gawain, and avoided the actions of Paris, Unferth, or Loki (The modern 'dark hero' has changed all that, but another time). Humans learn best by experiancing, worst by lecture. Literature and stories is one of the best ways to learn without actually making every mistake yourself.

Just as we would neither subsist on a diet of sweet potatoes nor on a diet of cookies, neither should we subsist on only one type of literature, much less disregard it completely.

Guns and Bullets

I have been looking at rifles in the last few moments of spare time I will have before I head back to the Corps, and I just watched a video of a guy bad mouthing the AR-15 something fierce. Very Annoying. The AR and the AK are built on two different mindsets for two different purposes. In their own niche, each weapons performs very well, especially when you tweak them a little.

The AR is built on the American military philosophy that superior training and equipment will always beat superior numbers. Thus, the weapon constructed by a number of tight fitting parts that enhance accuracy, but are less tolerant of foreign matter or bad maintenance. Thus, the IRA used the Armalite AR-15 in Ireland (ever wonder about the name Ire-land, a land full of ire, but I digress) for accurate, sharp combat, then ran home, cleaned the thing, took care of it, and used it again.

The AK, on the other hand, is built on the Russian philosophy that if you throw enough people at the enemy, you'll win sooner or later, probably later. Put another way, quantity over quality (that's why Russia does not make semi-auto AK-47s, they are all fully automatic). The AK can spew out a lot of hard hitting lead in a short time, even if you just pulled the thing out of a bed of quicksand. The reason for this is that the gun is made of fewer, looser fitting pieces, so there is more wiggle room for dirt, mud, and general junk to get in without jamming the gun. The problem is that this wiggle room destabilizes the firing chamber, so after about a hundred yards, accuracy goes out the window. The AK is an excellent gun if you are fighting (or hunting, I tell my dad) in thick brush or if you will be using it for long periods without being able to clean it.

Both guns are great, but neither can do the other's job. If you try to make them, don't get mad that they don't measure up.

Wishful Logic

Last night the Bastrop GOP put on a forum dealing with the issue of the proposed ACC campus being built in Bastrop. In return for getting a campus on the wrong side of town that over three years will grow to serve 1,100 annually, Bastrop will become co-signers for ACC's $444,000,000 debt, a debt that will grow after ACC buys land and builds a $38,000,000 campus. The reasoning behind this bad investment goes something like this.

1. Bastrop has a low household income level,

This is caused by Bastropian's low education,

Therefore, more education will raise income level.

2.If we bring in an ACC campus, then more people will get a better education.

3. Therefore if we bring in an ACC campus, then Bastrop will get a higher income level.

All three arguments are seriously flawed, however, as the propositions and conclusions are either false, do not follow, or both.

The most solid argument of the three is (1). Education and income level are fairly complementary. If you have one you are likely to have the other. The problem is that young people in Bastrop are not staying in Bastrop if they can help it, at least as far as I can tell. This is me speaking without any studies or polls, but from what I have seen, if young people can leave Bastrop, for the most part they do. Hence, giving Bastropians a better education would not necessarily raise the income level since the recipients of that education would simply leave the Bastrop area.

Argument (2) is where the real problems are. First, it assumes that Bastropians would get a better education if they could, which is not true for the majority of Bastrop youth. It is an unarguable fact that Bastrop High School is rife with problems ranging from drugs to pregnancies to violence. Less than 40% of BHS graduates go on to take any form of higher learning. That means that over 60% of Bastrop Youth do not take advantage of distance learning or any of the easily accessible college campuses around Bastrop. Former Mayor Scott suggests that if we put an ACC campus right next door then the young people will attend. Some of them will, it would be foolish for them to turn down free education. The second reason that this argument falls flat is because it assumes that the people a new campus would attract will make good use of the education. Those that want a good education in Bastrop can get it today with distance learning or at one of the many ACC campuses nearby. The people who enroll in a new campus will be the ones who are, for the most part, free loaders who will not put their education to good use (I am speaking generally here and from my own experience, which is, I admit, limited).

Thus, when we arrive at Argument (3), every proposition that it is built on is false, and thus it is left without a leg to stand on. This was former Mayor Scott's only reason for pushing the project, and I was suprised to not see any kind of statistics from him on average income in any of the cities ACC has annexed in the past. Instead, all I got were figures from Mr. Parmalee showing that the cities themselves annually lost around $2,100,000 dollars to the program.

Also, we are being told that the campus will add nine cents to property taxes for ever hundred dollars of property value. We are promised that the rate will not rise, but Austin was told the same thing when ACC first began, and the rate has since almost doubled.

Yes, Bastrop needs to do something to fix it's education, but this is like saying the best way to fix a house is to make it taller, never minding the fact that the foundation is shifting. Throwing money at something and building newer, bigger, emptier buildings (think BHS Performing Arts Center) will not fix the problem. There are numerous other options that Bastrop can look at, the ACC proposal is far from the best.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

The dominant issue over the last few days has been the attempt to build a mosque only a few blocks away from Ground Zero. The propriety of such a building at such a sight is questionable at best, but can we please, focus on the issue and not throw up smoke screens all over the place? No one is suggesting that mosques should be restricted across the U.S., there is no persecution of Muslims across our nation, we are not throwing them in jail or forcing them to meet secretly in homes and woods as many Muslim nations continue to do to Christians and Jews. No, all we ask is that they not build a Mosque only a few blocks away from the most horrific massacre of Civilians this nation has ever suffered, an act committed by men who claimed to be dedicated Muslims.

To claim that this is religious persecution is nothing other than silly, when one looks at a map and sees that there is a Muslim place of prayer less than half a mile from Ground Zero, and a mosque less than two miles from the site. Why exactly do we need another, bigger mosque, right next door to the place the twin towers stood? Also, bear in mind that the property was bought for a very low price, on account of the fact that the building that stands there now was damaged by landing gear from one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers.

I mean, what is it about the site that Muslims have to build a mosque there? Why? I'm not saying that all muslims are complicit in the acts of 9/11, but the Imam who is trying to build the mosque has not exactly gone out of his way to show his horror at the acts, claiming that America was complicit in the attacks, having created Osama Bin Laden. I'm not trying to heap abuse upon anyone, but building this mosque seems just a tad bit unncessesary.