Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Commentary - Todd Littleton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary - Todd Littleton. Show all posts

Friday, August 18, 2017

Jesus and Hitler Are Not the Same: False Equivalence Arguments in A Post-Truth Era


White supremacists march in Charlottsville, VA, August 13, 2017

Love God with All Your Mind or,
This Is Not That
http://www.toddlittleton.net/love-god-with-all-your-mind-or-this-is-not-that
 by 

Dallas Willard contended that Jesus was the smartest human being to ever live. Some quickly respond, “Duh, he was God.”

That is not what Willard had in mind.

Steeped in his Jewish faith, reading the Bible available to him and formed by the regular recitation of the Shema, Jesus, Luke notes, “Increased in wisdom.” Armed with the regular reminder to include the mind with a love for God proved pivotal as Jesus addressed and redressed the fallacies of his day. Tithing of your mint, dill, and cumin to avoid the weightier matters of the law – justice, mercy, and faith – is a false equivalence. Jesus identified it among the Pharisees. (Matthew 23:230
Even if some would claim all things are settled so stop thinking too much, loving God with our minds still requires good thinking. We are helped by noticing logical fallacies as we evaluate arguments. From time to time I have invited my friend Greg to write up a short piece highlighting a specific fallacy. Here is his piece on false equivalence.

Jesus and Hitler: This Is Not That

We might as well start with Hitler, since we’ll get there anyway, and this week, it’s perfectly legitimate to reference Nazis.
Jesus and Hitler both started important movements, so they are the same.
That’s an egregious example of false equivalence, an informal logical fallacy that relies on a similarity between two things. The similarity is then taken to encompass the whole of the comparison, making the two things equivalent in the mind or the argument of the one offering the comparison. It’s easy to see why the example offered breaks down.
Jesus did start a movement, and it was predicated on love and forgiveness. Hitler also started a movement, and you know that’s where the similarities end; to say that they are the same is a clear example of false equivalence. They are not logically equal.
We look for equivalences in order to make judgments, either value judgments or truth judgments: this is good, this is bad, this is happening, this is not happening. There are two basic approaches:
Analogy: A is like B.
Equivalence: A is the same as B in important ways.
The former is far more common than the latter. Take your typical 14-year old as an example.
“Oh my God, mother! Everyone else is going to the party but I’m grounded? You’re just like Hitler!”
This is what we would charitably call a weak analogy. The mother is like Hitler only inasmuch as she is preventing the teenager from doing something the teenager wants to do. As analogs go, that’s incredibly weak. If the mother was killing the teens friends in horrific experiments, the analog is much stronger.
False equivalence typically deals with things happening in the real world, so it’s not usually an abstraction. It’s possible to do it as a thought exercise, but we typically only refer to it to discuss real world things or events. This week provides the perfect example.
The counter-protestors in Charlottesville are just as bad as the Unite the Right protestors because they came armed and looking for violence.
OR
Black Lives Matter and Antifa are the same as the alt-Right protestors. Both sides use violence to achieve their ends. They are both equally bad (wrong, etc.).
First a caveat. Identifying a false equivalence requires a desire to do so. That may seem trite, but it cannot be emphasized enough. We now live in a world where facts are subject to politicization, which is to say, a fact is only a fact if it works for me or my side. Anything that works against me or my side is not a fact. This is a clear example of confirmation bias, a tendency that afflicts all humans irrespective of their political affiliation. What is required is a desire to get at the truth, whatever the truth may be, even—especially—if it conflicts with what I believe. That is supposed to be a hallmark of the Christian tradition, but it seems to be dying a slow death these days.
Are the counter-protestors in Charlottesville the same as the Nazis in Charlottesville? If relying on the comparison that both are willing to use violence, then the claim is barely true, and then only if incredibly important information is ignored. Do the counter-protestors want to set up a government that enslaves other races? Do they want to deport white people “back to their own country?” Do they want to systematically remove the rights of white people? No. No. No. Do the Nazis? Yeah. We are talking about actual Nazis here.
Secondly, were the counter-protestors all Leftists activists or “antifa,” as they have come to be known? Only if clergy from various denominations and faiths with linked arms are Leftist activists. Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, Reform Jews, Sunni Muslims, etc., all Leftist activists? No. Were all the protestors on the Right some version of a white supremacist? As far as we know, yes. They were chanting “Death to Jews,” and “blood and soil,” a rallying cry for white supremacists that dates back to the Third Reich.

Whether or not we want to quibble with the methods of the “Left” in this situation, we must first set aside questions of methodology and discuss questions of identity. Were we dealing with actual Nazis? Yes. Is anyone in America today that you can think of as bad as actual Nazis? I hope the answer is no, and if it is, then the two sides are not equivalent.


Anti-Fascist Marchers in Charlottsville, VA, August 13, 2017