On corporal punishment.

The Bible, of course, mentions it. It also mentions slavery. Many people still practice it. I'm not going to tell you how to live your lives. If your parents practiced it and you look on that fondly, I'm not going to say anything about that, either ("What did you say about my mother?"). However, when modern child development experts do include it on their list of "things you can do", it's last on the list and has a lot of caveats about how to do it properly. If done wrong, it has bad consequences. More importantly, it's very easy to overuse. Therefore, it's probably not a wise idea to categorically endorse it and it's a bad idea to say anything against people who don't do corporal punishment. If you do, you're wrong.

However, a certain prominent Russian Orthodox cleric has come across recently in conversation as if he is advocating this:



I realize that, with some caveats, laymen are not supposed to criticize clerics exercising their priestly ministry and all that jazz. However, he's full of shit.

But, then again, St Theophan the Recluse said to beat your kids every day whether they need it or not[1]. That's the only way they'll gain the phronema and believe the world is 7521 years old as the Bible says.

In a conversation about the article I'm referring to but not linking to, somebody said the following, "I wish more parents would give their kids a good smack, especially when they roll around on the floor with toys (!) during the Divine Liturgy."

This is completely wrong. Beating the children at church will make them hate church, rolling on the floor is perfectly fine for somebody under the age of 6, and children under a certain age will also generally have some toys. Deal with it. It's wonderful. If your parish doesn't accommodate this behavior, by the way, your parish is wrong. This is part of the problem with pews. No rolling room.

[1]: He did not say this.

More thoughts on evolution

Many years ago I had plans on doing a post about the ideology of "evolutionism" and the problems of interpreting the fact of evolution (if referring to evolution as a fact in the fossil record and natural selection and common descent the theory explaining it) and how, even with complete information of all of history, the problem of interpretation could never, of course, say anything at all about the existence and activity of God or even, and this was the salient bit for the conversations with "meat puppets"[1], any positive statement about ethics or morality based solely on those data. I never got around to it, otherwise I would not have written the above summary. I still stand by that most adamantly: science says nothing at all about morality or theology. I don't quite hold to "non-overlapping magisteria" or whatever those people say, this is more of a Wittgenstein-ian thing (late Wittgenstein). Science can inform moral decisions when those moral decisions rely in some way on facts (eg, if somebody wrongly thinks that the morality of abortion depends on whether or not the heart is beating or the fetus could survive outside the womb, Science will tell you directly when those two events occur). Pretending, or, worse, actually believing, science implies moral conclusions can lead to some very dangerous conclusions.

If you are coming to moral conclusions informed by science and by ancient theological thought, this becomes more important, since it requires knowing several things: old scientific thought, current scientific thought, old theological thinkers, and the relation of the theologian to the schools of old scientific thought. A common pitfall here is again in the unfortunate case of abortion. People who don't read very well sometimes come across the notion that some Christian thinkers allowed abortion until a certain point of the pregnancy, and therefore modern opposition is ahistorical. A familiarity with Aristotle's Biology and what was meant by anima (sorry, we're discussing the Latin) in that context would immediately make clear the concern of the theologians involved and the application of modern knowledge of the processes of life would have two results: horrifying the theologians at how wrong their previous conclusion was (how many murders occurred because of their opinion?) and having them revise their opinion toward not allowing it after significantly earlier point - I would think to the sperm meeting the egg, but I cannot speak for them, as the parties involved have generally been dead for many, many centuries.

[1] "Meat puppets" referring to those who believe they are basically puppets made of meat.

My thoughts on evolution.

I have gotten over 100 responses so far to the survey after I posted it a couple places and then a couple other people posted it in other places. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten much feedback in terms of how people would rather have phrased the questions and what other questions they are interested in or think would be better than the questions I wrote. As I mentioned, it's a poorly-written survey and needs plenty of work before even most takers would be happy about it.

Of course, it goes without saying that, despite our many disagreements about many things, both Young Earth Creationists and those who don't dismiss the mountain of scientific evidence are earnest followers of Christ acting in good faith and are both capable of being holy and pious Orthodox Christians, no matter how wrong one of the sides is.

With that said, however, this video is rather amusing:

Professor Farnsworth debates Creaturism from PhilM on Vimeo.

My personal thoughts on evolution are that the Young Earth folks, particularly those following Fr Seraphim, are significantly overstating the patristic case for their view and their reasons for dismissing the idea of a 14-ish billion year old universe with a 4.5-ish billion year old Earth and the evolution of life as we know it over the course of hundreds of millions of years from single-celled organisms simply won't stand up. However, a wholly Orthodox position consistent with the mind of the Fathers will be able to be integrated with this understanding. I hate to disappoint, however: I am not the one to do so. There are some people who have done some things in this regard and there are certainly several prominent bishops, priests, and theologians who are working on it. I am also not the one to dismantle Fr Seraphim's arguments or those of his followers. I mean, one of the prominent ones is a seminarian who has spent several years thinking about this and compiling a giant pile of patrtistic YEC proof texts. I have neither the time nor the inclination nor the training. Nor the desire. And especially not the gift.

EDIT: I don't think "batting for the right team" makes me any smarter or a better person than other people or that "batting for the wrong team" makes other people any less intelligent or worse human beings. Fr Seraphim was a very bright fellow and very holy, to boot. His followers are also right that there are a lot of theological issues to hash out if an evolutionary perspective is going to carry the day. I mean, heck, I'm not smart enough to do it. But, somebody will have to do it, and it's a pity that these earnest and intelligent folks are not going to be the ones to do so, because the evolutionary position is correct and the Young Earth position is simply wrong, albeit very attractive.

Orthodoxy and evolution

After running into somebody who was essentially implying that the unanimous consensus of the Fathers was a literal 7-day creation some 7000-ish years ago - and this includes all modern saints and elders - I wondered about what other people say about this. Their principal objection to an older earth and specifically evolution was what becomes of death. Namely, nothing at all, not plants or animals or humans, could die before the Fall. According to this unanimous consensus. Anyway, I whipped together very quickly and unscientifically a survey meant for Orthodox Christians - entertainment purposes only - here: survey on evolution and Orthodoxy.

There are some definite flaws.

Personally, I think, beyond the obvious flaws, that the age of man deserves some thought. I put in 200,000 years as the appearance of biologically modern homo sapiens. But, you know, if God grabbed existing homo sapiens and then endowed him with a "rational soul" as some 'kind of' think, maybe the point should be "behaviorally modern man", which is on the order of 50,000 years ago (the "thousands of years" response). In that case, perhaps different questions should be written that distinguish the two. The "thousands of years" response was there more for "old earth creationists" of the stripe that believe the account of events as historical and literal, but that Adam and Eve were further in the past than Genesis seems to indicate, given archaeological finds that can be believed. And that's just one issue that nobody else has mentioned to me yet. There are several that have been mentioned on other questions.

Like I said, not a very well-written survey.

If you want to browse the results, you can look at the preliminary graphs.

Young Earth Creationists are wrong.

Doesn't matter how many holy elders you have backing you up. The world is billions of years old.

Why is Libertarianism so Intolerable?

A rewrite of a piece in First Things:

Arguments for Libertarianism have become predictable. Most include an historical homage to long established tradition: Look for mention of property rights, the golden age of industrialization, and Thrasymachus' theory of justice. Catholic authors typically proceed to locate their claims outside the magisterial teaching of modern Catholic Social Teaching: Look for rebuttals or avoidance of Rerum novarum or any one of the subsequent encyclicals, which commemorate its anniversary (see here, p. 42ff.). Next, there are the literary sources, which can be mined for any number of bombastic or polemical gems. Rothbard can always be depended upon to deal one’s opponent a good drubbing. And yet, the appeal to liberty, successful megacorporations, and some of the best* economists of the age leave most unmoved.

This same disconnect between theory and practice is evident in the lives of libertarians themselves. In short, many “so-called libertarians” are hypocrites. While decrying the evils of big government and insistently re-proposing the perennial appeal of free market life, many libertarians continue to avail themselves of all of civilization’s amenities and fail to take their principles to their conclusion. I count myself among these conflicted adherents. I extol the virtues of a liberty-filled life and persist in a vocation that traditionally places me at the center of the world’s largest cities. Embarrassing. With the force of Aristotelian-Thomistic anthropology, a deeply felt robber baron nostalgia, and even “patron saints” of the movement like Fr. Sirico, how is it that these arguments wield such anemic purchase?

The last paragraphs can be taken pretty much as-is. Note: I'm not a libertarian, though the rewrite of this would say I am. I'm also not a distributist, but there are nice things about it.

EDIT: In all fairness, the piece wasn't that bad. There is some point there: no matter what supporters do, nobody really cares about distributists. I mean, no matter what anybody says, I'm all like, whatevs. Libertarians, of course, are completely intolerable and tiresome.