Pious Fraud and Climate Skepticism

April 11, 2018March 4, 2014 by Nathaniel

Pious fraud is the idea that sometimes it’s a good idea to lie to serve a higher good. In religion, it may mean lying about the origins of a sacred text or witnessing a miracle. In science, it may mean lying about a useless medical treatment to try and strengthen the placebo effect. In Disney movies, it means giving an ordinary feather to Dumbo and telling him that it will magically help him to fly. The ethics of pious fraud are therefore hotly contested.

The most recent entrant in the long and checkered history of pious fraud is the exaggerated claim that 97% of climate scientists all agree on climate change. The claim started out as a paper (not peer reviewed, btw) and then went on to get lots of airtime. Even President Obama tweeted it:

There are lots of problems with the original paper and with the way that the paper has been used by others. Before we dig in, however, it’s important to carefully define the terms. The issue that is really at stake is not just a science issue, but a policy issue as well. It has 5 core components. They are:

Climate change is really happening, and will continue to happen. (Implied: human forecasts are accurate.)
The principle cause of climate change is human behavior (e.g. carbon emissions).
The effects of climate change will, on balance, do much more harm than good.
Climate change is largely reversible (e.g. we can do something about it).
The costs of reversing climate change (e.g. with slower economic development for impoverished nations) are outweighed by the benefits.

As it turns out, however, the 97% paper successfully establishes near-universal scientific consensus on exactly none of these issues. Well, maybe on point #1, if you want to be generous. There are several articles out there castigating the authors of the paper for dishonesty and other shenanigans, but by far the strongest evidence of just how fraudulent the paper is comes from Popular Technology.

First, let’s explain how the 97% paper worked. Bjørn Lomborg (as reported in WattsUpWithThat) writes that:

The paper looks at 12,000 papers written in the last 25 years (see here, the paper doesn’t actually specify the numbers, http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/watch-the-pea/). It ditches about 8,000 papers because they don’t take a position.

They put people who agree into three different bins — 1.6% that explicitly endorse global warming with numbers, 23% that explicitly endorse global warming without numbers and then 74% that “implicitly endorse” because they’re looking at other issues with global warming that must mean they agree with human-caused global warming.

Voila, you got about 97% (actually here 98%, but because the authors haven’t released the numbers themselves, we have to rely on other quantitative assessments).

In other words, the 97% paper is based on interpreting the papers of various other climate scientists. So what Popular Technology did is actually quite simple, they asked the original authors if they agreed with how the 97% paper had characterized their articles. As it turns out: they did not. The 97% paper effectively drafted many of the most vocal and outspoken critics into the consensus regardless of their actual feelings. That would be bad enough. But, as the scientists described, the problems only get worse from there.

Let’s start with issue #2. Ostensibly, this should be the most reliable claim of the paper because it’s the whole point of the paper. Other folks, like President Obama, may have subsequently added on points 3-5 (which the paper itself didn’t claim), but surely the paper at least had some accuracy about the main issue it claimed to study? Not really. The problem is that the consensus being defended is what’s called the IPCC consensus (after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), but the IPCC defined anthropic global warming as global warming that is caused 90%-100% by humans. That’s a pretty high bar. The 97% paper, on the other hand, lowered that bar to just 50% and it did so without explaining what they were doing or why. Dr. Scaffeta, who has a PhD in physics and whose paper was used by the 97% paper as evidence of the consensus, explains:

Cook et al. (2013) [the 97% paper] is based on a strawman argument because it does not correctly define the IPCC AGW theory, which is NOT that human emissions have contributed 50%+ of the global warming since 1900 but that almost 90-100% of the observed global warming was induced by human emission.

What my papers say is that the IPCC view is erroneous because about 40-70% of the global warming observed from 1900 to 2000 was induced by the sun. [emphasis added]

Please note that it is very important to clarify that the AGW advocated by the IPCC has always claimed that 90-100% of the warming observed since 1900 is due to anthropogenic emissions. While critics like me have always claimed that the data would approximately indicate a 50-50 natural-anthropogenic contribution at most. [emphasis added]

What it is observed right now is utter dishonesty by the IPCC advocates. Instead of apologizing and honestly acknowledging that the AGW theory as advocated by the IPCC is wrong because based on climate models that poorly reconstruct the solar signature and do not reproduce the natural oscillations of the climate (AMO, PDO, NAO etc.) and honestly acknowledging that the truth, as it is emerging, is closer to what claimed by IPCC critics like me since 2005, these people are trying to get the credit.

They are gradually engaging into a metamorphosis process to save face.[emphasis added]

This is why I say that none of the 5 points above are actually substantiated by the 97% paper. Not only do Scaffeta (and many more) reject the characterization of their papers, but they in fact have dissenting views about the causes of global warming. This has profound implications. If (to use Scafetta’s high estimate), 70% of the global warming from 1990 – 2000 is caused by the sun, then this means that the models used by the IPCC consensus are wrong and we can’t trust their forecasts (so much for points 1 and 3). It also means that we have significant reason to doubt whether or not there’s much humans can do about climate change (points 4 and 5).

This is far from the only explosive comment to come from these scientists, however. Dr. Nir J. Shaviv (PhD in astrophysics) was also cited as being a part of the 97% consensus, and also completely rejected that categorization. He wrote:

Nope… it [that the paper was part of the 97% consensus] is not an accurate representation. The paper shows that if cosmic rays are included in empirical climate sensitivity analyses, then one finds that different time scales consistently give a low climate sensitiviity. i.e., it supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C).

I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper. [emphasis added]

So, not only does he also find that cosmic rays must factor into some of the warming (and therefore also criticize the forecasts), he also points out that he was unable to express his true opinion because of the peer review process, which was basically censoring (albeit not very well) his true belief. Just as a quick summary of the rest of the findings, here are some additional comments from the scientists who spoke with Popular Technology about how they felt the 97% paper characterized their own work:

“It would be incorrect to claim that our paper was an endorsement of CO2-induced global warming.” (Dr. Craig D. Idso, Geography)
“I think your data are a load of crap. Why is that a lie? I really think so.” and “I think your sampling strategy is a load of nonsense. How is that a misrepresentation? Did I falsely describe your sample?” (Dr. S. J. Tol, Economics, in a series of tweets to one of the authors of the 97% paper.) [emphasis original to the Popular Technology article]
“The paper is strongly against AGW, and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC.” (Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, Quaternary Geography, describing how his own paper is actually against the consensus.)
“I am sure that this rating of no position on AGW by CO2 is nowhere accurate nor correct…. I hope my scientific views and conclusions are clear to anyone that will spend time reading our papers. Cook et al. (2013) is not the study to read if you want to find out about what we say and conclude in our own scientific works.” (Dr. Willie Soon, Rocket Science, describing why the categorization of his paper as having “no position” on anthropic global warming was false. He added: “No extra comment on Cook et al. (2013) is necessary as it is not a paper aiming to help anyone understand the science.” [emphasis added])
“If Cook et al’s paper classifies my paper, ‘A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change’ as “explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize,” nothing could be further from either my intent or the contents of my paper… I would classify my paper in Cook et al’s category (7): Explicit rejection with quantification.” (Dr. Alan Carlin, Economics) [emphasis original to Popular Technology piece]

The Popular Technology article concluded: “The Cook et al. (2013) study is obviously littered with falsely classified papers making its conclusions baseless and its promotion by those in the media misleading.” and added two followup analyses: Cook’s 97% Consensus Study Game Plan Revealed and The Statistical Destruction of the 97% Consensus.

Where does that leave us? The most charitable possible interpretation is that the 97% paper deliberately or negligently inflated consensus on this issue. The reason for doing this is obvious: it’s a policy paper rather than a scientific paper. It is designed to get people to support policies intended to curb global warming without actually proving that these policies are the right decisions to make. It is a pious fraud. When the paper is used by others who tack on issues 3-5 (harm, reversibility, and net-benefit of opposing global warming) they are compounding the same fraud which the paper was deliberately designed to initiate.

This is a very, very bad idea. It is a bad idea because it poisons the entire debate. If scientists are willing to blatantly lie and fabricate to try and win a policy war, how can we (especially we who are non-experts) trust the scientific “consensus”? If the consensus were as low as 33% of scientists but it was transparent and honest and included all 5 points, that would be enough to make the issue quite serious. If it was as high as 67% (with the same conditions) that would be enough to make me seriously consider supporting drastic policies. But to try and trick people into believing there is consensus on all 5 points when there is, at best, exaggerated consensus on just 1 or 2 points throws the entire policy argument into question. Now I know that people are lying to me, and I also know that I have no realistic way of estimating the extent of the fabrications. I have to weigh the uncertain efficacy and uncertain benefits of climate change remedies against their certain costs.

This is not a good position for someone to be in if they are truly worried about climate change. And it’s not a reasonable position to be in if you’re actually confident of the facts. The fact that we are in this position at all is the reason that I, like many other open-minded skeptics, look for other possible explanations to explain the absolutist rhetoric of the climate change alarmists.

What Do Americans Think About Abortion?

April 22, 2018February 26, 2014 by Nathaniel

Will Saletan, the national correspondent at Slate, is a smart and independent thinker on the abortion issue. He even wrote a controversial but highly regarded book called Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, said that the book “will make activists on both sides of the debate uncomfortable,” and that “there’s no smarter political commentator in Washington today.” Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, the editor of National Review Rich Lowry, called Saletan “one of America’s shrewdest political writers,” and added “If you care about the issue of abortion, you must read this book.”

So when Saletan weighed in on the question of Do Most Americans Think Most Abortions Should Be Illegal? for the 41st commemoration of Roe v. Wade, I was intrigued to read his perspective.

The statistics on public opinion of abortion are pretty complex and very controversial. Saletan took an immediate dislike to a poll paid for by the National Right to Life Committee that provided unusually granular survey responses to a question about when abortion should be legal.

The poll (above) found that 53% of Americans fell within the broadly pro-life categories of opposing abortion at any time during a pregnancy with exceptions for the life of the mother as well as for rape and incest.

The NRLC also published the results of a poll from Gallup (a poll that they didn’t choose the questions for), and that poll confirmed the findings of the NRLC poll:

Based on these polls, one would conclude that most Americans are against most abortions, but Saletan thinks we should ignore these polls, and instead we should pay attention to a different collection of polls (also from reputable sources) that broke down abortion into the following cases: legal in all cases / legal in most cases / illegal in most cases / illegal in all cases.

As you can see, the NRLC and Gallup polls shows Americans opposed to most abortions. The polls provided by Saletan show the opposite. Who to believe?

Saletan argues that we should disregard the NRLC poll, but his reasoning is actually quite poor. According to him, the NRLC stacked the deck by picking 3 questions that are broadly pro-life and 3 that are broadly pro-choice, thus creating the false sense of equality between the two sides. Additionally, he suggests that with so many choice, folks will just opt for the middle.

This argument makes no sense, primary because both the polls Selatan disbelieves and the polls he likes are identical in terms of his alleged shenanigans. Three of the six NRLC options are more or less pro-life, but so are two of the four options in Saletan’s preferred polls. Additionally, it makes no sense to talk about driving people towards the middle when there are six choices. Six is an even number. If there was a strong central tendency for poll responses (Saletan provides no evidence of this assertion, and I couldn’t find any either), then wouldn’t the NRLC have picked five options instead of 6? (Or seven?) And, once again, the polls are identical in this since both have an even number of choices with half being pro-life and half being pro-choice. In short: Saletan has offered zero credible evidence to prefer one set of polls to the other.

The simplest explanation is the most reasonable, both polls are correct. In fact, Saletan implicitly argued for this in a follow-up piece (published the very next day) called The Political Peril of Second-Trimester Abortions. He wrote, “Poll numbers are usually meaningful, even when they don’t mean exactly what the sponsors claim.” In other words: respect that the answers people give to the actual poll questions are the best you’re gonna get, and be suspicious of what people extrapolate from there. That means we should prefer a theory that accommodates both sets of polls rather than one that forces us to try and explain away either set. (This is especially true because the NRLC’s poll is backed by a poll from Gallup and another one from CNN/ORC).

I took the trouble of looking through all of the polls that Saletan compiled to see if I could find a pattern. And I did. I found a very, very strong pattern that Saletan didn’t pick up on, and it is this: poll respondents react very strongly to the way the words “illegal” and “legal” are used. Here’s the Gallup poll that backed up the NRLC results:

Legal under any circumstances	26%
Legal under most circumstances	13%
Legal only in a few circumstances	38%
Illegal in all circumstances	20%

Here’s the CNN/ORC poll (scroll down a bit):

Always legal	25%
Legal in most circumstances	11%
Legal in a few circumstances	42%
Always illegal	20%

Note that the third option doesn’t contain the word “illegal”. That is different from the four options that Saletan mentioned: legal in all cases / legal in most cases / illegal in most cases / illegal in all cases. To see what ones of those examples looks like, take a look at the AP/GfK poll:

Always legal	34%
Legal in most circumstances	19%
Ilegal in most circumstances	13%
Always illegal	29%

Now the third option includes the word “illegal”. That’s it, that’s pretty much the sole difference between both sets of polls. If the pro-life position is described without the word “illegal”, then Americans are pro-life. If the pro-life position is described using the word “illegal”, then Americans are pro-choice. Take a look at those polls again, when the third option uses the word “legal” it is the most popular response (in both polls). When the third option uses the word “illegal” it is the least popular response. The swing is truly enormous: support for the same option drops by about 67% when the word choice shifts from “legal” to “illegal”.

Unlike Saletan’s theory, the observation about the effect of word-choice is actually strongly supported by empirically verified theory and also consistent with all of the results. That’s good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually make the answer to the question much more clear. So if you want the simplest answer to the question, it is this: Americans do not know if they want most abortions to be illegal or not.

I’ll go a little farther, however, and make two observations.

First, I’m inclined to think that the NRLC poll is actually the best poll of the bunch because it doesn’t switch between “legal” and “illegal”. It uses only “legal” throughout. (What I’d really like, however, is a comparison to the NRLC poll that asked the exact same questions but rephrased them to use “illegal” throughout”.) My hunch (and I admit it is just an informed hunch), is that this probably takes some of the emphasis off of the emotional punch of the change from “illegal” to “legal” and gets closer to Americans policy preferences.

Second, I think that in some ways the most important finding is being obscured by all this discussion. We may not know exactly what Americans think about abortion, but we do know with certainty that the policy the American people want is a policy that is incompatible with Roe v. Wade. This becomes really clear in Saletan’s second piece (The Political Peril of Second-Trimester Abortions). In it, he used additional data from a poll funded by the Knight of Columbus and found significant erosion of support for abortion rights during the 2nd trimester even among the population that self-identified as strongly pro-choice. The decline in support was constant regardless of how the questions were asked. He concluded:

This doesn’t mean that most Americans think most abortions should be illegal. According to the most recent government data, 92 percent of abortions are performed in the first trimester. Beyond that point, abortions are much rarer and much harder to defend, both morally and politically. Without the protection of the courts, it’s difficult to see how they’d stay legal. [emphasis added]

In other words, the only thing standing between the will of the people and pro-life reform of abortion is the Roe v. Wade decision. This is one of the common themes of the entire abortion debate: Roe v. Wade was such an absolutist ruling that it gave the pro-choice side everything it could possibly have wanted. Despite a thin veneer of moderate rhetoric it is, when combined with the Doe v. Bolton decision handed down the same day, a truly extreme position. As a result of getting everything they could have wanted, the pro-choice side has had nothing to win and everything to lose since 1973.

In contrast to the Roe v. Wade ruling, the American people are anything but extreme and absolutist. It’s clear that any abortion after the first trimester is outside the mainstream of public opinion. Within the first trimester, it’s harder to say where Americans draw the line.

In a sense, though, it doesn’t matter where they draw the line today. Right now that’s an academic question because—until Roe is overturned or modified in some way—there’s no way to touch first-trimester abortions. Or second trimester abortions, for that matter. This makes pro-life strategy obvious: focus on using the unpopularity of 2nd trimester abortions to erode Roe v. Wade. Support for Roe is still deep and strong, but only because so few Americans understand what the ruling actually does. By name? Roe v. Wade is popular. By effect? It’s toxic. The key is to make defenders own the toxicity. (Related: It’s also important to help Americans realize how many of them already oppose abortion, because media bias causes us to significantly over-estimate the popularity of the pro-choice movement.)

And that’s really all you need to know about American opinion on abortion. When they see the facts, Americans still make the right choice. It’s true of Roe today, and I believe one day it will be true of elective abortions, regardless of trimester.

(Note: This post has been reprinted with permission by Secular Pro-Life and also by LifeSiteNews.)

On Rape Culture in the Ensign (The Lack Thereof)

April 10, 2018February 20, 2014 by Nathaniel

(Note: I published a follow-up to this post on March 6, 2014.)

The March 2014 edition of the Ensign (which is the official monthly magazine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) is already available online. The cover article, called “What is the Lord’s Standard for Morality” is stirring up headlines like Controversial LDS Article Raises Concern Of ‘Rape Culture’ and attracting vociferous rebuttals like Morality? We can do much better than this.

The article is by and large a tame restatement of the basic moral principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as they relate to sex. These standards are pretty much identical to the basic moral principles of all traditional faiths. Quoting from the article:

The Lord’s standard of morality is not so much a list of do’s and don’ts as it is a principle, which can be expressed as follows: The procreative power is to be exercised in the marriage relationship for two key reasons: (1) to bind and strengthen ties between spouses and (2) to bring souls into the world. These uses have the blessing and endorsement of the Lord.

Despite the fact that the principle is more than “a list of do’s and don’t’s,” the article goes on to clearly stake out the practical implications of this principle in plain English: Don’t have sex outside of marriage, including homosexual sex at any time. Don’t try to get around the “no sex before marriage” on a technicality, i.e. don’t even fool around. Don’t masturbate. Don’t look at porn. Dress modestly. The ongoing controversy illustrates the necessity of these clarifications.

It’s no surprise that these standards would be ridiculed and dismissed by pop culture. If the world at large doesn’t hate you, then you’re doing something wrong. There’s nothing new or noteworthy about the idea that religious fuddy-duddies and goody-goodies are silly in the eyes of the world. What’s surprising to me, however, is the amount of push-back coming from within the Church. The most problematic paragraph comes from the section about modesty, and reads as follows:

The dress of a woman has a powerful impact upon the minds and passions of men. If it is too low or too high or too tight, it may prompt improper thoughts, even in the mind of a young man who is striving to be pure.

The outrage comes from thinking that goes something like this: if you say that the way women dress controls how men think and feel, you are making women responsible for men’s actions. In fact, this is the very logic used to defend rape culture: women who dress immodestly are “asking for it”. Therefore, the Ensign is now perpetuating rape culture.

Let’s deconstruct this reasoning.

First, to say that “the dress of a woman has a powerful impact upon the minds and passions of men” is not the same as saying “women control men’s thoughts.” In every other human interaction, we’re perfectly capable of understanding that a person can influence you without controlling you. If someone cuts you off in traffic, they are going to have a “powerful impact” on your mood. That’s a fact. But your reaction to that provocation is still your decision and therefore your responsibility. That’s another fact. These two facts, (1) that someone can influence you and (2) that ultimately your behavior is still your own responsibility are two facts that people seem to have no problem accepting simultaneously until the discussion turns to modesty. Then suddenly we get this bizarre notion that we can’t say “women have an influence on men” without saying “everything men do as a result is a woman’s fault.” That bizarre notion makes no sense, and doesn’t appear (explicitly or implicitly) in the article.

This article doesn’t claim that women are responsible for men’s thoughts. That’s the accusation, and it is false. Men are still responsible for their own thoughts, but it would be nice if women would dress modestly to help them out. Just as people are responsible for keeping their tempers in control, but it’s generally considered common courtesy not to provoke people unnecessarily. Let me reiterate: if I say “Be nice, because it will help other people not lose their temper,” it doesn’t mean that I’m saying it’s your responsibility whether or not some random stranger loses his or her temper. Even though we interact with each other, we are ultimately responsible for our own behavior, and that’s it. The Ensign shouldn’t need to specifically call this out, because it’s right there in the 2nd Article of Faith: “We believe that men will be punished for their own sins.”

Lizzy Seeberg, who committed suicide after being harassed for reporting a Notre Dame football player for sexual assault. The connection between football culture and rape seems a lot stronger than the Ensign and rape, but one of these targets is easier to attack than the other.

Allow me to observe, at this point, that not only does the article not blame women for men’s mental purity, but it never even gets remotely close to discussing rape. That’s… not even in the ballpark. Let’s be really, really, really clear. An Ensign article making the entirely obvious observation that men respond to the way women dress is not “rape culture”. A young girl being brutally raped by football players and then being harassed when she appeals for justice until her family is driven out of town and their house is burned down, that is rape culture. CNN reporters who talk about what a tragedy it is for rapists to be found guilty of rape and deprived of their promising futures, that is rape culture. Everyone talking about the fictitious death of Manti Te’o’s non-existent girlfriend while totally ignoring the actual suicide of “Lizzy Seeberg… not long after being intimidated by Notre Dame football players for reporting a sexual assault by one of their teammates,” that is rape culture. Chris Brown being accepted back into polite society (with a few notable exceptions), that is rape culture. Roman Polanski being embraced by his peers after his crimes? That is rape culture. Woody Allen being defended after the very credible allegations of his crimes? That is rape culture. Ray Rice having a fine and dandy career after video emerges of him dragging his unconscious fiancee out of an elevator (because he knocked her unconscious) that will be rape culture if that’s how the story ends. Even if you think the Ensign article is wrong and misguided, putting it in the same category as these (horrifically numerous) examples of rape culture is like comparing every bad thing that happens to the Holocaust. It trivializes real evil and makes you look like a fool.

I understand that there are more moderate criticisms as well, such as the fact that modesty standards often seem to be unequally applied to women vs. men. They appear to be unequally applied because they are unequally applied. They are unequally applied because of the fundamental reality that females are on the supply side and men on the demand side of the sex equation. That is common sense which everyone who is not motivated by politics can see, but it is also (in case you’re skeptical) scientific fact. Men and women approach sex differently but it is men who are primarily motivated by visual cues and also who want to have sex more frequently and more casually. (Once again, these aren’t just random assertions. There is data.) A gender-blind approach to sexuality would be no more reasonable than a gender-blind approach to professional sports. If the WNBA did not exist, how many women would make the cut to play pro basketball against men? Zero. Pretending gender differences do not exist when they do in fact exist may be politically expedient, but it does not actually serve the interests of equality. If you’re looking for symmetry, this is where you will find it: women are encouraged to dress modestly (partially for their sake, partially for the sake of men) and men are encouraged to stop watching porn (partially for their sake, partially for the sake of women). There is equality, but not sameness, in the Lord’s standards for sexual morality. Make no mistake: that is the core outrage which this article perpetuates in the minds of its critics. Mormonism espouses a view of humanity in which gender matters, and therefore believes that men and women owe certain obligations to each other in a complementary relationship. The modern world espouses a denialist political ideology in which gender has no deep or lasting significance that we do not create for ourselves.

It is also no great surprise to me that so much of the outrage at the article is coming from professional therapists. The article invites that response when it leads off with a bold statement that God, and therefore the Church, is the ultimate arbiter of sexual morality.

Some years ago my father, an attorney, was trying a lawsuit. For his authority, he cited only one case—a California Supreme Court case issued many years before. His opponent cited a number of lowercourt decisions of more recent vintage. The judge said to my father, “Mr. Callister, don’t you have a more recent case than this?” My father looked at the judge and replied, “Your Honor, may I remind you that when the supreme court speaks on a matter, it only needs to speak once.” The judge nodded with approval. He was reminded that the supreme court trumps all lowercourt decisions, how ever numerous or recent they may be.

So it is with God our Father—He needs to speak only once on the issue of morality, and that one declaration trumps all the opinions of the lower courts, whether uttered by psychologists, counselors, politicians, friends, parents, or would be moralists of the day. [emphasis added]

In fact, the reaffirmation that the Church has the final word on these matters may be the only truly novel claim made in the article. Everything else is a restatement of traditional beliefs. This one is hardly surprising, but it is fairly novel. So it’s natural that psychologists and counselors would lash out in response. It’s a turf war: who gets to define moral standards for sexuality? The Church? Or the APA?

Let’s take a look at the claims made by one counselor in particular, as a representative of the apparent conflict between General Authorities and counselors. Natasha Helfer Parker, in her article Morality? We can do much better than this… has a bullet-list of issues with the Ensign article. She starts by claiming that the article leaves no room for personal revelation. This is obviously not true, as personal revelation is always necessary in addition to official pronouncements and even scripture. That is a fundamental and constant principle of Mormonism. It does not need to be restated in every article. However, in this particular case, I’m wondering precisely what revelation she has in mind. Is she suggesting that if you pray and ask, God might just tell you to go ahead and have sex outside of marriage? There are often shades of gray and complications with applying moral principles, but the “no sex outside of marriage” one is about as universal and clear as it gets.

She next takes the article to task for calling masturbation “self-abuse” because “this is not an appropriate clinical term.” She may not have noticed, however, the Ensign is not a clinical journal. The inability of experts to understand that specialized terminology must give way to common vernacular in non-specialized contexts is faintly amusing. It reminds me of the time that an outraged medical doctor told my father (a professor of English) that it was unfair for PhDs to be referred to as “doctor” because medical doctors had to study harder and did so much more good. My dad smiled, and reminded him that hundreds of years ago when college professors were already using the term “doctor,” the medical professionals of that day were known as “leeches”. Perhaps if he wanted a unique title, he could try and resuscitate that one?

Most of the rest of the bullet points rely on the same tired strawman approach of insisting on seeing a viewpoint you don’t like in its most crude and absolutist form. But the most sinister criticism she levels is the one that comes at the end of the bullet list, although it’s a sentiment that pervades the entire piece, and that is this: “The way that sexual standards are presented in this type of talk is unrealistic and sets people up for failure.”

Lowering standards cheapens Christ's sacrifice. He did not drink the bitter cup for fun. If there was an easier way to save us, He would have taken it. — Lowering standards cheapens Christ’s sacrifice. He did not drink the bitter cup for fun. If there was an easier way to save us, He would have taken it.

Well now, we wouldn’t want to set people up for failure, now would we? Contrast this sentiment with Paul’s simple statement that: ” all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

If not all have sinned, than the Atonement is not necessary. If the Atonement is not necessary, then Christ is superfluous. If Christ is superfluous, then the Gospel is a joke. What good news? We have no need of a savior. We just lower moral standards to the lowest common denominator (or maybe pray for an exemption) and then everyone gets to heaven on their own merits. This well-intentioned call for lowered-standards is sadly anti-Christian. The entire message of Christianity–not just Mormonism, but all Christianity–is that none of us can live up to God’s impossible standards. She faults this Ensign article, but it was Jesus himself who said “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Maybe we ought to just hand Parker a copy of the New Testament and a red pen and let her tell us what Jesus should have said.

I will say at least this much for Parker: the fact that she couldn’t even get to the end of one article without cutting out the beating heart of Christian faith provides a very clear example of just how important it is that the business of articulating eternal standards stay in the hands of the General Authorities.

J. K. Rowling’s Brilliant World-Building: Wizards, Muggles, and Human Nature

April 11, 2018February 5, 2014 by Nathaniel

Introduction

It’s tempting to write off the small minority of humankind who dislike the Harry Potter books as merely malcontents and misanthropes but for one fact: they are somewhat united in their criticism of the books. This criticism, in a nutshell, is that the Wizarding World and the witches and wizards who inhabit it make no sense.

Neville's parents were some of the most recent victims of Voldemort's followers. Nobody thought to try and go back in time to save them? — Neville’s parents were recent Deatheater victims. Nobody thought to try and save them?

For example, in a world where time travel is possible, why did no one ever think of using it to kill Voldermort or at least save some of his victims? The Ministry of Magic had a whole cabinet full of time turners, after all. Maybe there’s some practical or ethical problem that would prevent them from being used in that way, but it seems unbelievable that no one even considers a long-run plan in which they might be useful for something other than letting Hermione overload her course schedule. Surely Sirius might have thought it would be nice to use the trick that saved his life to try and save Lily and James? Surely Harry, after a time turner made him think he saw his father, might have gotten the idea of using the device to go back and see his parents for real?

This is the kind of unreality that can really bother someone who is otherwise perfectly happy to suspend disbelief about the whole magic thing. Potions and spells are fine, but Quirrel repeatedly trying to grab Harry with his bare hands mere moments after using magic to bind him is not. Apparition is acceptable, but a world where wizards can apparate but choose to mostly travel using trains, floo powder, port keys, carriages pulled by griffins, thestrals, broomsticks, dragons, magical underwater pirate ships and the Knight Bus instead isn’t. Ritual duels using a variety of interesting curses and counter-curses seem sensible, but using anything but avada kedavara in an all-out-war seems as absurd as trying to fight a real war with Nerf guns.

One might argue that only Scrooge would apply this kind of scrutiny to beloved children’s tales. The Wizarding World doesn’t make sense, but who cares? I understand that approach, but in the first case: I can’t help it. Analyzing things is what I do. I couldn’t turn it off I tried. In this case, however, something funny happened. The closer I looked at these supposed flaws, the more convinced I became that J. K. Rowling is a world-building genius. If you look carefully, the apparently nonsensical traits of the magical community actually make a very good deal of sense. In fact, given the basic reality of magic in Rowling’s work, there’s no other way the Wizarding World could have turned out.

On Magic

There are two key facts to understand about magic as it exists in Harry Potter. The first is that it’s very rare. How rare? Well, here’s one way to try and estimate the entire population of Wizards in the United Kingdom, just to get a general idea.

Start with the fact that Harry’s first year of Hogwarts was 1991. There were 40 first years in his cohort. So if we assume every 11-year old wizard or witch in the UK showed up at Hogwarts we know that there were 40 of them in 1991. Now let’s compare that to the total population of 11-year old kids in the United Kingdom in the same year. We can start with the total population of the UK in 1991: 57,439,000.. The closest age bands I could find were from 2011, but lets just say that’s close enough. In that case, 5.8% of those 57,439,000 were children between the ages of 10 and 14, which is 3,331,462. Let’s assume that within that age band equal numbers of kids are 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. So if we divide the total number of the group (3,331,462) by the number of groups (5) we get that there were 666,292 11 year old kids in the UK in 1991. If 40 of them were magic-users, then we can establish a wizard:Muggle ratio of 1:16,657. Now, sure, there were a lot of “ifs” and assumptions along the way, but it’s not a bad start for a ball park estimate, and if that ratio holds true across all ages then there would have been about 3,448 witches and wizards all together in the Unitked Kingdom in 1991.

This is fairly close to J. K. Rowling’s estimate of 3,000 . Of course it’s possible that not all the eligible 11-year olds in the United Kingdom came to Hogwarts. You might also want to consider Squibs to be part of the wizarding community. Both of these factors would raise the estimate from 3,448. J. K. Rowling stated elsewhere that the total population of Hogwarts was 1,000, and others have used this as a starting point to extrapolate higher numbers for the total population in the range of 12,000 – 15,000 . Even at the high end, however, we’re talking about a population that is at least 99.97% muggle. The magical community is absolutely tiny.

You see that sliver representing 0.03% of the population? No, you probably don't. That's because it's *tiny*. — You see that sliver representing 0.03% of the population? No, you probably don’t. That’s because it’s *tiny*.

The second is that magic conveys a tremendous amount of power for very, very little effort. This seems obvious, but it’s impossible to overstate the profound implications of being a person who has secret powers that 99.97% of the rest of the world do not even know exist. As Horace Slughorn showed in The Half-Blood Prince, a wizard can easily live comfortably simply by mooching off of the work of Muggles. There is no such thing as real poverty or want or deprivation in the wizarding world except, as with the Gaunt family as, as a result of stubborn, voluntary arrogance or, as with the Weasley family, apparent indifference. (Ron’s robes may have been unfashionable and their house may have been crowded, but access to housing, food, healthcare, and self-washing dishes was never in question.)

The magical world, in other words, is comprised of a tiny cadre of the ultra-elite where the only scarce resource is status. All the dysfunctional aberrations (by Muggle standards) of the Wizarding World flow from this.

Parasitic

Because witches and wizards don’t have to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, the entire society is basically a parasitic leisure class that depends entirely on the Muggle world. Start with government: the Wizarding World (at least in the United Kingdom) is under the jurisdiction of the Minster of Magic. In the parliamentary system of the United Kingdom, the various ministers are appointed by the Prime Minister and fulfill a role somewhat akin to the Cabinet of a United States President. This means that the head of state for the wizarding community is described by the wizarding community itself as only an adjunct to the larger Muggle government. By this logic, the head of state for witches and wizards in the United States would be just “the Secretary of Magic” (instead of “President”).

The same is true of culture. All wizarding music is depicted as being just magic-themed veresions of contemporary muggle artists. Mrs. Weasley adores her old-timey crooning and the Hogwarts students enjoy the rock and roll of the Weird Sisters. And what about wizarding religion? There is none. The only religious holidays mentioned are Christmas and Easter, but the celebrations seems strictly secular. There is only one explicit instance of religion in Harry Potter, although it’s a very important one. The gravestone of Lilly and James Potter bears a phrase (“The last enemy that shall be conquered is death”) which is taken from one of Paul’s epistle’s to the Corinthians in the New Testament. To the extent that the wizarding world has any religion at all, it is apparently borrowed directly from the Muggle world.

Even the grand old institution of Hogwarts itself belies a world dependent on Muggle culture and institutions. After all, students do not start until they are 11, by which time they are clearly supposed to have learned basic literacy somewhere else. It’s not clear what that means for pure-bloods like the Weasleys or Malfoys, but at least for those who hail from the muggle world like Harry and Hermione, it means a reliance on public Muggle schools for basic education.

So where do the basic economic goods of the wizarding world come from? Where to the houselves at Hogwarts get the ingredients for their feasts? Where do the tailors at Diagon Alley get the fabric for their robes? Who mines the tin, copper, antimony, and bismuth that go into a cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)? Whether paid for with Muggle money exchanged at Gringotts or “borrowed” a la Slughorn, it is clear that everything that isn’t explicitly magical in the Wizarding World—from government to culture to physical goods—comes directly from the Muggle world, and at effectively no cost.

Backwards

The reason that witches and wizards make so little of their own is quite simply that they don’t have to. In contrast, every aspect of the development of the Muggle world is defined by the constant struggle for scarce resources. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. That is why Muggle society progresses, and it is why the wizarding society does not. Efficiency drives the Muggle world, but it has relatively no influence on a world where anyone can always opt to just coast along and enjoy a comfortable life gleaning off of Muggles.

Although the drive towards invention and efficiency has been a permanent aspect of Muggle society, for most of human history the pace of progress has been glacial. That’s why, with very little effort, wizards and witches had been able to keep pace with Muggle technology until the Industrial Revolution. Telescopes they have, while steam power (to say nothing of electricity) they do not

The technological gap is obvious in Harry Potter, but what is most interesting is the gap in the financial sector. In Muggle history, the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution were predicated on financial innovation of prior centuries. Two of those innovations are conspicuously absent from the wizarding world: representative money and fractional reserve banking.

Witches and wizards, by contrast, are using commodity money: coins that derive their value from the rare metals of which they are composed. In actual history, representative money (which refers to paper money that can be redeemed for valuables) is actually even older than coinage, but it really came to supremacy with banking innovations just prior to the Industrial Revolution, and especially fractional reserve banking.

Fractional reserve banking is the practice of banks lending out more money than they actually have. It sounds a bit crazy, but every banking system in the real world is based on this system. The reason it is important is that it lets money flow freely in the economy to where it is needed most.

Hagrid, and everyone else, calls Gringotts a bank, but as far as the world of Harry Potter is concerned, pretty much the only role Gringott’s provides is a secure place to keep stuff. This has about as much to do with banking as a coat closet has to do with running a restaurant. Gringotts, in other words, is absolutely not a bank by any definition that the muggle world would recognize in the last five or six hundred years.

So the wizarding world is dependent on the Muggle world and mirrors their institutions on Muggle institutions, but over the last few centuries as the pace of Muggle progress has increased exponentially the wizarding world has been left farther and farther behind. They have the façade of Muggle institutions, but only the façade.

The fact that they call it a bank just shows they don't actually know what a bank is. — The fact that they call it a bank just shows they don’t actually know what a bank is.

Seen this way, there’s no surprise to the fact that wizards travel by all manner of bizarre and inefficient contrivances when—with minimal discomfort and a little bit of organization—they could easily be zipping around the world faster than the speed of light. Everything about the wizarding world is inefficient, not just the travel arrangements.

Shallow

In the Muggle world, a really advanced education requires the 13 years of K-12, 4 more years of undergraduate work, 5 or 6 years of work on a combined masters/doctoral degree and then perhaps another year or two of postdoctoral work for a total of up to 25 years of education. In the wizarding world, 7 years has you covered, maybe 8 or 9 if you want to be an auror.

In the Muggle world, a credible military force requires expensive hardware and serious training. The United Kingdom spends about $60 billion per year on defense spending . In the United States, the costs of training a single Marine are hard to estimate, but good guess would be $50,000 – $150,000 . The deployment costs are much higher, with the US Army spending between $850,000 and $1,500,000 per soldier per year for deployment in Afghanistan. In the Wizarding World, by contrast, a couple dozen teenagers with no special equipment who train in their spare time without adult supervision constitute a credible threat to the standing government.

One big reason for this is simply that, as mentioned previously, the Wizarding World is tiny. The British Armed Forces comprise about 400,000 individuals (active and reserve) out of a total population of about 63 million. That means about 0.63% of the population is in the armed forces. If the wizarding world in the UK has a population of 12,000 and Dumbledore’s Army had 80 members (seems high for the book, but low if the total school population was actually 1,000) then they would represent 0.67% of the total population. And, unlike a typical modern army, they would all be potential combat troops. Just to be clear: 80 high school kids constitute a greater relative military force in the Wizarding World than the entire British army, navy, and air force do in the Muggle world.

I count 25 in this picture. Based on prior reasoning, that would put the effective military might of these kids just ahead of Turkey and just below Canada. — I count 25 in this picture, so about 1/3 the combined military might of Britain relative to the Wizarding World, give or take. Do not mess with DA.

The same shallowness works on an individual level. In the Muggle world an unarmed 15 year old doesn’t even register as a threat next to a fully armed SAS team. But in the Wizarding World, you might actually feel the need to deploy an entire squad of their most elite fighters, the aurors, just to bring in a teenage kid. In the Muggle world, a precocious high school student doesn’t hold a candle to the expertise of a newly minted neurosurgeon, but in the Wizarding World the skills of a really talented 7th year student can rival or even surpass those of adult wizards and government officials. The wizarding world is incredibly flat. Setting aside Squibs, there’s very little distance between the least and most knowledgeable or dangerous relative to Muggle society.

Reckless

As a result of all the previous observations, wizarding society is incredibly reckless relative to Muggle society. It’s impossible to get even ballpark mortality estimates because the wizarding world is at war throughout most of Harry Potter, but even the peacetime activities are frightfully dangerous compared to what would be acceptable in a Muggle world. In the very first book, after all, Dumbledore keeps a vicious, man-eating, three-headed dog monster inside a school full of young kids who have a hard time knowing where their classes are. And, oh yeah, Fluffy is separated from the kids by nothing but a locked door that virtually any of the kids can defeat with a trivial spell. From that to Hagrid’s choice of ferocious textbooks to the potentially lethal Tri-Wizard Tournament, wizards all seem a bit deranged when it comes to matters of life and death.

But that sort of makes sense in a world where everyone is carrying the magical equivalent of a loaded bazooka from age 11 whether they want to or not. Ariana Dumbledore’s death is the most tragic example of this: she lived and died in peacetime before either Voldemort or Gridlewald had risen to power. She died simply because her brother got into a fight with his childhood friend. Similarly, Luna’s mother blew herself up messing about with potions. Because magic is so powerful, being a wizard is inherently dangerous, and there’s just no way around it.

But it’s not just individuals who are prone to early demise in the Wizarding World. The entire society itself is incredibly volatile because of all the characteristics noted so far. Wizarding society is completely dependent on Muggle society for its institutions, culture, and basic resources. And yet, because wizards aren’t subject to the same competitive pressures, the link between the Wizarding and Muggle Worlds is increasingly breaking down. This leaves the wizarding institutions increasingly arbitrary and brittle. It’s also a very flat world, where the relative power of the weakest member is very high relative to the most powerful institutions. Add to this the very low numbers of wizards, and it’s clear that the entire society is dangerously volatile and will only become more so with time.

Conclusion

Charles Darwin once noted that the honey bee would obviously be better off if it did not have a barbed stinger. Because the singer is barbed, a honey bee can only sting once before it dies. Wasps and hornets, on the other hand, are capable of stinging many times without suffering injury because they have straight stingers. Obviously it would be better if honey bees had straight stingers. Darwin understood, however, that this is unlikely to happen. The reason for that is simple: evolution doesn’t tend towards optimal results. Natural selection is all about doing the least necessary to survive. Without direct evolutionary pressure, bees will not evolve straight stingers even if it would be better for them to do so.

Humans are the same way. Without external pressure: we stagnate. Because of their incredibly powerful gifts, witches and wizards are largely immune from the pressures to which the rest of human society is constantly subject. On an individual level, this sounds like a lot of fun, and it’s part of the reason that Harry Potter is so much fun to read. But in the long run, the freedom from pressure comes with a serious cost.
The odd behavior of witches and wizards and the bizarre nature of their social institutions is not sloppy world-building. It’s brilliant world-building based on a keen observation of human nature. If a tiny cohort of humans were given incredible magical powers, this is pretty much the world that you would end up with. Parasitic, backwards, shallow, and reckless

I really have no idea how much of this was intentional on J. K. Rowling’s part. I haven’t read The Casual Vacancy, but judging by The Cuckoo’s Call (in addition to the Harry Potter books, of course), she is an incredibly astute observer of human nature. My guess is that she didn’t sit down and think “How would a world populated by witches and wizards operate?” My guess is that she just started with a fun premise (hidden magic! wizard school!) that involved certain key attributes (magic is relatively easy and magic users are very rare), and the rest just flowed naturally from there.

In a way, of course, it doesn’t really matter. You can enjoy Harry Potter without analyzing it. But I’m not gonna lie: the fact that it withstands this level of scrutiny so well makes me love the books more then ever, even if it is a darker take on the Wizarding World.

Here’s the most interesting proposition, though. It’s possible that part of what fueled Voldemort’s rise to power was the increasing instability of the Wizarding World as it lagged farther and farther behind Muggle progress. And, since the pace of technological progress shows no sign of slowing down, you have to wonder: what’s the long-run fate of the Wizarding World? How long can this relatively primitive society continue to maintain any social cohesion at all while all its foundational institutions are eroding out from underneath it? If we’re really lucky, maybe one day J. K. Rowling will decide to tell us.

Finding the Right Naturalism in Science

January 30, 2014January 30, 2014 by Bryan

You have probably all heard how religion is the enemy of science. Let me say something you may not have heard: Naturalism represents an equally dangerous foe for the scientific enterprise. How can that be, you ask? Science is a naturalistic enterprise, isn’t it? Well, yes and no. Science is what we call methodologically naturalist in that it “assum[es] naturalism in working methods, without necessarily considering naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailments.” Hence the old recognition that science cannot answer all of our questions as human beings, nor did it ever intend to. However, there are those who take naturalism beyond the realm of science and into the metaphysical, stating that nothing exists beyond our physical world. They are known unsurprisingly as metaphysical naturalists.

Since science is methodologically naturalist, it has become natural (pun intended) for many metaphysical naturalists to adopt science as their standard of belief. In keeping with that adoption, many naturalists see it as their duty to defend science against the supernatural. I contend that naturalists, in trying to defend science, threaten instead to introduce the evils of the worst religious orthodoxy into science. I believe this outcome can occur for two main reasons:

First, many naturalists substitute science as their source of metaphysical belief since they lack any metaphysical claims of their own aside from rejecting all metaphysical claims. People are generally resistant to their beliefs being challenged, and so if people’s metaphysical beliefs are inextricably tied to their scientific beliefs, they are going to be much more dogmatic about scientific theories. And where, for example, a Christian might be content to simply reject science, leaving himself or herself sadly bereft of scientific knowledge but science itself fine, the naturalist, deriving their knowledge from science alone, has no choice but to try and warp science into not just an empirical expression but a metaphysical one as well–an orthodoxy about the nature of existence. This orthodoxy most often takes the form of believing that all reliable human experiences and knowledge must be reducible to an empirical level. Naturalistic orthodoxy strikes at heart of science itself by trying to make science into the new orthodoxy and thereby destroy the questioning and theorizing that makes the scientific enterprise possible.

The signs of this orthodoxy are clear enough in how people speak about science. We may rightly say that scientific theories are well-tested and highly explanatory. We may not say they are proven or true, and yet many people choose these exact words. I cannot state this point emphatically enough. Anyone who says science proves theories is making an anti-scientific statement. Karl Popper, the famous philosopher of science, played a large role in asserting this view of science:

Scientific theories, for [Popper], are not inductively inferred from experience, nor is scientific experimentation carried out with a view to verifying or finally establishing the truth of theories; rather, all knowledge is provisional, conjectural, hypothetical—we can never finally prove our scientific theories, we can merely (provisionally) confirm or (conclusively) refute them; hence at any given time we have to choose between the potentially infinite number of theories which will explain the set of phenomena under investigation. Faced with this choice, we can only eliminate those theories which are demonstrably false, and rationally choose between the remaining, unfalsified theories. Hence Popper’s emphasis on the importance of the critical spirit to science—for him critical thinking is the very essence of rationality. For it is only by critical thought that we can eliminate false theories, and determine which of the remaining theories is the best available one, in the sense of possessing the highest level of explanatory force and predictive power.

My pronouncement may seem like a semantics game–people conceivably could use ‘proven’ as shorthand for the much bulkier ‘well-tested and highly explanatory’–but I believe a view more worrying is at play when people state, “Science has proven this theory.” They are using science not as an expression of our current best understanding of the natural world, but as the only understanding they believe we will ever have about existence.

Believing science has shown us the only true understanding of the world leads to yet another problem: People begin to conflate accepting scientific conclusions as a measure of how well you understand science. Since science is the truth, if you do not accept it, that must mean you simply do not understand it. This is another anti-scientific attitude. As Dan Kahan rightly points out in the comments sections of his “Cultural Cognition” blog, a brief study of scientific history reveals the necessity of decoupling understanding theories from accepting theories in order to produce new scientific theories. Dr. Kahan cites how Einstein needed to understand and yet reject Newtonian physics to come up with relativity, just as proponents of quantum physics needed to understand and yet reject relativity to come up with quantum physics. Orthodoxy does not allow you to decouple understanding and acceptance: If the final truth has been discovered, you only reject it for lack of understanding.

Second, for some naturalists, their strongest commitment is to naturalism, not science, and therefore they will be highly opposed to any scientific theory that conflicts with naturalism or gives credence to supernatural claims. A good example of this point is the Steady State Theory. Steady State Theory was a popular theory in the early to mid 20th century and stated that the universe has always existed, in contrast to the Big Bang theory which has a clear beginning of the universe. As PBS puts mildly, “[t]his struck a philosophical chord with a number of scientists, and the steady-state theory gained many adherents in the 1950s and 1960s.” The theory was only abandoned after a long struggle and discovery of strong falsifying evidence in part due to the popular philosophical implications of the theory among naturalist scientists.

To be fair, problems can and have arisen when scientific theories conflict (or seemingly conflict) with supernatural claims. My point here is not to set up a competition between supernaturalism and naturalism over who is the “true” defender of science. Neither group is. The true defender of science is anyone who recognizes that any orthodoxy is a threat to the scientific enterprise. Thus Karl Popper invites us all to become defenders of science, not by what particular metaphysical beliefs we hold or reject, but by upholding this opposition to orthodoxy in our quest for greater understanding of the world in which we live:

I hope that my proposals may be acceptable to those who value not only logical rigour but also freedom from dogmatism; who seek practical applicability, but are even more attracted by the adventure of science, and by discoveries, which again and again confront us with new and unexpected questions, challenging us to try out new and hitherto undreamed-of answers.

As a final note, I cannot state enough how large of a role Dan Kahan played in getting my mind turning on this subject. I have shared Karl Popper’s views on the scientific enterprise for some time, but Dan Kahan helped me start connecting my understanding of the philosophy of science to modern day issues in science. His blog can be found here.

A Society Meet For Male Priesthood

January 20, 2014 by Fiona Givens

Priesthood and Ministry

There appear to be at least three principle positions with regard to women and male priesthood. Most Latter-day Saint women support the status quo. The latest Pew Study “finds little support for the notion that women should be eligible for the Mormon priesthood. Only one in ten Mormons (11%) believe that women should be ordained to the priesthood of their church, whereas 87% think the priesthood should be open only to males. Large majorities of both men and women express this view.” Surprisingly, perhaps, “women [are] somewhat more likely than men to say the priesthood should be open only to males (90% vs. 84%).”

Nine in ten women, in other words, do not wish to see the male priesthood shared by both genders. However, recently a minority of women have recently garnered headlines for their efforts to move the church leadership to make ordination to the priesthood available to all worthy members, including women.

Presumably, a third group would consist of those who are undecided; who, when questioned, indicate a predisposition to support or oppose the present policy, but with reservations. My remarks are directed to all three constituencies. I want to express my solidarity with those who find present practice to be in harmony with the Lord’s will, and a cause for celebration rather than lament. I want to suggest to those who agitate for change that, while I respect their choice, there may be alternatives to the stark deprivation vs. equality rhetoric than sometimes accompanies their world-view. And I hope most of all to encourage the undecided of the middle ground to consider more nuanced ways of thinking about ministry in the kingdom, the priesthood, and Relief Society that can, hopefully, move us all in the direction of a more unified Zion community.

Ministering vs. administering

It is important at the outset to clarify what I have in mind in talking about priesthood. Jesus Christ was and is the Great High Priest. His exemplification of priestly conduct was three-fold: a lifetime of service to the marginalized, the vulnerable, and the solitary individual; a paradigmatic enactment of meek and selfless devotion to serving rather than supervising (when He washed his disciples feet); and His culminating self-effacing gesture whereby, in Bonhöffer’s words, He drew men to Him through his weakness rather than strength, his surrender rather than triumph (His sacrificial death). The world equates greatness with mastery, success with power, and status with hierarchy. But priesthood is rightly predicated on a model that turns worldly paradigms upside down. If this radical model was largely lost to the Christian tradition, Joseph restored it in section 121. Priesthood is there emphatically, unambiguously, and dramatically severed—completely dissociated—from contemporary versions of power structures. “No power or influence, can or ought to be maintained, by virtue of the priesthood.” In other words, any seeking for priesthood—by men or women—who are even partially motivated or inspired by a desire for influence or control, is anathema to the spirit of Christ. This is not reading between the lines. This is the clear and explicit warning that is this section’s essence. (Note that when Abraham sought the Priesthood, it was to become “a greater follower of righteousness”. He was not seeking for power.

In Mormonism, culture often insinuates itself into the church in corrosive ways. Mormons too often talk of “priesthood advancement,” aspiring missionaries aim to be APs, as later in life they plot their rise to the office of GA. The Lord seems to indicate that most Mormons will fail the test of purity in priesthood service. “It is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little power, as they suppose, that they immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” “Almost all” fail the test. All too often priesthood is equated with influence, control, status, power, honor, or visibility. And people seek priesthood for the power it gives them to administer, rather than to minister. Those may all be reasonable motives, and in the political world at large, equal access to the corridors of power and influence is a fine agenda. I am simply asserting that the Lord has pleaded with His people not to apply the standards and aspirations of the world to service in His kingdom, because His kingdom is to be constituted differently, with an agenda the world cannot understand or appreciate.

Because D&C 121 reads: “it is in the nature and disposition of almost all men” to abuse power one might speculate that priesthood is given to men to foster an inclination to service for which they are not naturally inclined. And, indeed, LDS women by and large leave men digesting dust when it comes to ministering to the Lord’s family. We had dinner with an LDS couple last night. In answer to a casual question, the wife summarized some of her activities, with one child still at home and another at university. Beth works as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for Henrico County. She also volunteers at a Title 1 elementary school in the City of Richmond as a mentor, Reader’s Cafe Discussion Leader, and “Room Mom” for a 4th grade classroom. In addition, Beth has lunch with a group of four 4th grade girls once a week during lunch where they read a book and discuss it. She also organizes the holiday parties for a 4th grade teacher. (Beth herself has no children at this school). She learned of this opportunity to serve these children through a friend who belonged to the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond, which Beth was required to join in order to volunteer in this capacity.

Beth’s involved and time-consuming service is not atypical. The following is an email that was recently sent by my ward Relief Society President:

“Dear Sisters, I want to thank you so very much for so willingly signing up to help care for Alice [who is not a member of our church]. You all did a remarkable job over the past 3 months of taking meals to her, helping feed her, doing the dishes, sweeping the floor, changing her diaper, rubbing lotion on her back and legs, sorting through her bills and just visiting with her and being her friend. I know she appreciated all of you. And the Lord is pleased with our service. You are a wonderful group of ladies that I am privileged to call my Relief Society sisters. The next door neighbor, Jennifer is recovered from her knee surgery and assumed care of Alice on Sunday. Even though we are not running a RS schedule to care for her, you can stop by and visit or take a meal anytime you just want to. The Relief Society Presidency will continue to give her a bath periodically. Thanks again for your love and kindness towards each other.

Pam

Please let me be clear about what I am, and am not saying. I am not saying that women have enough to do making quilts for orphaned babies, so let the men get on with running the church. Neither am I saying that women are incapable of abusing power. I am saying that the discrepancy between men’s ways of serving and administering, and women’s ways of ministering and administering, deserves to be examined in terms other than exclusion and deprivation. With the progressive organization of the church, the democratization of the male priesthood became more hierarchically driven. What began early on as a virtual priesthood of all (male) believers, became increasingly ordered into quorums, and then into quorums situated in a hierarchy. To this day, men talk of priesthood lines of authority, file leaders, stewardships and keys. The incredible detail and orderliness and structure of male priesthood is one of its strengths—but it comes at a cost. Male priesthood lines of authority are great in communicating and addressing critical needs for disaster relief when they occur. However, the corporate nature of priesthood administration has a tendency to stifle initiative, consume one’s time, distract from the work of ministry proper, and instill jealousy, covetousness, and unrighteous dominion. The Lord counters the predilection to priesthood abuse by encouraging men (and women) to be agents unto themselves, to take righteousness in their hands, not to wait to be commanded in all things, not to let the weightier matters be overwhelmed by the minutiae, to serve with purity of heart, and not to aspire to the honors of men.

It seems to me that disburdened of the hierarchical structure of male priesthood women are more easily able to take righteousness into their own hands when it comes to ministering in the kingdom. What the examples of my friend and Relief Society President suggest to me, is not a gender on the peripheries doing the inconsequential. As these two sisters powerfully illustrate—women are free to work and serve without restraint or confinement, without the distractions of status or the straightjacket of supervision, seeking service rather than approval, discipleship in a horizontal sisterhood rather than advancement in a pecking order. In my mind’s eye, I see male priesthood holders as all too often imprisoned in an Eiffel Tower of “return and report” up and down a priesthood chain; myself and my sisters I see as ranging freely over a large and spacious field, like the Savior, going about and doing good, without being instructed as to where to do that good, as agents unto ourselves. This is also the key to understanding, as far as I can see, the other Pew finding: “The belief that women should be ordained to the [male] priesthood is less common among those who exhibit the highest levels of religious commitment than among those with lower levels of commitment.” When I asked a number of stake and ward relief society presidents as well as other very engaged Mormon women whether they would be open to the possibility of male priesthood, they laughed. They informed me that they already had too much on their plates without adding men’s issues or aspirations to them.

Priesthood Power and Priesthood Authority

What much of the conversation about women and the priesthood comes down to is priesthood as administration, versus priesthood as ministry. I think it is unfortunate to dichotomize the two. While I feel it is imperative that people feel free to be anxiously engaged in a good cause of their own free will and choice, there are some instances in which administration and organization greatly enhance the effectiveness of ministry. For example, starting on September 4, 2010 Christchurch (New Zealand) was submitted to a barrage of 8,000 quakes and aftershocks (the largest of which measured 7.1) over a period of 18 months. While the LDS Church in Christchurch responded immediately to the call for help, it was the Relief Society who organized water distribution around the city in the first few days and continued to provide nutritional and emotional support to the victims as well as working with the Civil Defense to provide people with financial and other pertinent advice. In response to parliamentarian Nicky Wagner’s tribute to the heroic services rendered by the sisters of the church to the community of Christchurch and the exceptional organizational skills employed by the Christchurch Relief Society sisters, the Relief Society president replied: “It is just something we naturally do in Relief Society.” Women and men who have been to the Temple have both been endowed with power from on high with the keys to minister and administer in the Lord’s kingdom. In an August 2012 address given at BYU Education Week Elder Ballard stated: “When men and women go to the temple, they are both endowed with the same power, which by definition is priesthood power.”

During the organization of the The Female Relief Society, Sister Cleveland stipulated: “we design to act in the name of the Lord—to relieve the wants of the distressed and do all the good we can” Sister Snow followed with: “as daughters of Zion, we should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which had heretofore pursued.” Presidentess Smith added “we are going to do something extraordinary…we expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.”

Priesthood power is a wide umbrella. I would like to suggest that women also have access through that priesthood power to priesthood authority and the keys to administer in a branch separate but parallel to the men who function within the Melchizedek Priesthood (more properly called “The Holy Priesthood After the Order of the Son of God”). According to the Old Testament, Prophets and judges could be women but the priesthood was reserved for men only. Even in the New Testament, while it is true that the Saviour surrounded Himself with women, there is no clear textual evidence that women were ever initiated into the prevailing male priesthood. This is not to say that Christ did not initiate women into a separate female priesthood or into the male priesthood for that matter. There is no compelling textual evidence that He did so, however. The Book of Mormon is even more stark in its male-centeredness. There are no prophets or judges let alone priests who were women according to that text. And there is no alluring Apocrypha attached to that text—not yet, at least.

The precedent, therefore, to which we must look for female priesthood authority is to our own restoration scripture and history and, specifically, to the organization of the Nauvoo Relief Society. America allowed for the greatest religious innovation, not being bound by ingrained religious tradition. New churches were sprouting up like mushrooms all over the place. Yet, of all the religious innovators of the time, it was Joseph Smith, the leader of the Mormons whom Harold Bloom called “A true American genius.” Brother Joseph felt no compunction to stay within any boundaries at all—social or religious. It was he who pushed the boundaries of priesthood access further than anyone had done since the coming of Christ. Not only does Joseph democratize priesthood to such an extent that ethnic minorities were originally included, the access to priesthood power and authority was greatly expanded in restoration scripture to include all worthy women as well as all worthy males.

As Elder Ballard stipulated, both men and women receive “priesthood power” in the Temple. Therefore, women who receive their endowment are ordained with the same power as men, and are “ordained after this manner—being called with a holy calling, and ordained with a holy ordinance, and [taken] upon them the high priesthood of the holy order, which calling, and ordinance, and high priesthood, is without beginning or end–/Thus they become high priests forever, after the order of the Son, the Only Begotten of the Father, who is without beginning of days or end of years, who is full of grace, equity, and truth…./. And now I say unto you that this is the order after which I am called, yea, to preach unto my beloved brethren, yea, and every one that dwelleth in the land; yea, to preach unto all…. “[F]or he [the Lord]…inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him…”

For Mormons the journey to the temple is the most sacred for it is there that we all are “endued with power from on high” irrespective of gender. “The power and authority of the higher, or Melchizedek Priesthood, is to hold the keys of all the spiritual blessings of the Church–/To have the privilege of receiving the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, to have the heavens opened unto them, to commune with the general assembly and church of the Firstborn, and to enjoy the communion and presence of God the Father and Jesus the mediator of the new covenant”

Indeed Joseph explained to the nascent Relief Society organization that “the institution they were forming had ‘existed in the church anciently…When the Priesthood was taken from the earth, this institution as well as every other appendage to the true order of the Church of Jesus Christ on the earth, became extinct, and had never been restored until’” now. The original Relief Society Minutes show that Joseph considered himself to be authorizing the women of the church to form an institution equal in authority to that of the male priesthood he had organized earlier. It is important to note that the organization of the The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo took place during the same period as the organization of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge . Indeed, the first meeting of The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo took place in the Masonic Lodge Room right above the Red Brick Store. Joseph was heavily influenced by Masonry and considered its founding tenets: Truth, Friendship and Relief to be in total harmony with the Gospel of Jesus Christ

After convening the women’s meeting, President Smith, together with Elders Taylor and Richards, “withdrew” while the sisters decided as to whom should be admitted into the society. In other words, the men left while the women organized themselves. When the gentlemen returned, Joseph expressed the hope that “the Society of Sisters might provoke the men to good works in looking to the wants of the poor— searching after objects of charity, and in administering to their wants”, concurring with section 121 that men were unable to fulfill the Divine mandate without the sisters’ encouragement and support.

In addition the sisters were “to assist” the male priesthood “by correcting the morals and strengthening the virtues of the female community, and save the Elders the trouble of rebuking; that they may give their time to other duties &c. in their public teaching.” This suggests, to my mind at any rate, that women were to be responsible for the moral education of the sisters of the church, including young women, thereby divesting male priesthood holders from so doing. The idea has recently been entertained that Relief Society Presidents rather than Bishops nurture the virtues of all of the women in her stewardship—young and older. Brother Joseph’s words appear to support that move.

Joseph also “propos’d that the Sisters elect a presiding officer to preside over them, and let that presiding officer choose two Counsellors to assist in the duties of her Office—that he would ordain them to preside over the Society—and let them preside just as the presidency preside over the church.” In other words, the sisters and not the brethren would be responsible for calling their organization’s officers. And the Relief Society President would be ordained to preside over the Relief Society and, I would suggest, the Relief Society auxiliaries—Young Women and Primary. It is quite obvious that Joseph intended for the Relief Society to have status equal to the male priesthood. Relief Society is the female equivalent of male priesthood. Or, in the words of President Taylor “this Institution was organiz’d according to the law of Heaven—according to a revelation previously given to Mrs E. Smith, appointing her to this important calling–[with]…all things moving forward in…a glorious manner.”

In addition, Joseph, did not presume to dictate to the sisters how they should run their organization or how they should preside: “if” the sisters needed the prophet’s instruction—“ask him [and] he will give it.” Joseph expected the sisters to be fully capable of running their own organization with no help from the male branch of the priesthood unless they asked for it. He also did not presume to organize the Relief Society according to male priesthood rankings. He suggested that if the sisters wished to pattern their organization after the male priesthood they were at liberty to do so: “If (emphasis mine) any Officers are wanted to carry out the designs of the Institution, let them be appointed and set apart, as Deacons Teachers &c. are among us.” Again, Joseph is reiterating the power and authority of the women to organize as the Spirit moves upon them rather than in obedience to male priesthood, emphasizing the equality of the women’s organization to that of the men’s. It is significant that Emma Smith, the first Relief Society President, chose not to model her organization on the hierarchical structure of the male priesthood.

The naming of the female branch of Christ’s Priesthood was also the organizers’ prerogative. The Brethren had suggested the name “The Nauvoo Female Benevolent Society,” which the sisters rejected in favour of “The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo.” The name “Relief Society” is no coincidence to my mind. Relief is one of the fundamental principles of Masonry, together with truth and friendship. As female organizations of the Masonic order had been founded in the US, it is more than likely that the founding members of the Relief Society were very much aware of the significance of the term they chose.

Their branch of the priesthood would be linked to that of the male branch in “friendship” and “truth”—hence the designation “The Female Relief Society.” In other words, both branches of the Melchizedek Priesthood would work together in mutual support, encouraging each other and meeting together in council to deliberate upon the affairs and future direction of the church as well as to expound truth. In turning the keys to Emma to found the female priesthood, Joseph encouraged Emma to “be a pattern of virtue; and possess all the qualifications necessary for her to stand and preside and dignify her Office, to teach the females those principles requisite for their future usefulness.”

As Maxine Hanks has pointed out, the structure of the RS Presidency is identical to that of the male priesthood: a president and two counsellors and when one looks at the structure of the male and female organizations of the church they also follow the same but parallel patterns: President, two counsellors and a board or a quorum or council.

It is also apparent to Joseph that just as he had been called by God to be Prophet, Emma had been called by God to be the first Relief Society President. In setting apart Mrs. Cleveland as counsellor to Emma, John Taylor refers to the new president as “the Elect Lady.” The title, “presidentess.” further validates Emma’s authority to preside over an autonomous organization and to share responsibilities equally with that of the male priesthood. To emphasize this point, Joseph re-read Doctrine and Covenants section 25 “and stated that [Emma] was ordain’d at the time, the Revelation was given to expound the scriptures to all [the church]; and to teach the female part of the community, that not she alone, but others, may attain to the same blessing.” Like Joseph, therefore, Emma was not ordained of man but of God to her calling as was the organization she was called to lead. This was her work as Joseph’s was to be prophet. The Relief Society was to foster the building of a “kingdom of priests” among the women in the church just as the male branch of the priesthood fostered the same among men. A paper by Don Bradley demonstrates that Emma’s office of elect lady was intended to be a female office equivalent to Joseph’s office of presiding elder.

The Lord frequently uses marriage as a synonym for unity and mutual service. Eve is a help “meet” or equal to Adam. As were the roles of Adam and Eve equal but complementary, so too are the roles of Relief Society and Male Priesthood to be equal but complementary. The historical and spiritual record show that Emma (Presidentess) and Joseph (President) were to preside over their respective branches of the priesthood as the High Priestess, Eve, and the High Priest, Adam, were called to preside in the ancient church. As husband and wife, the two branches of the The Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God (female and male) are to support and sustain each other and to prepare those belonging to their organizations to become priestesses and priests unto the Most High God. Joseph clearly saw the Relief Society organization as an institution destined for the creation of “priests”—a kingdom of them, in fact. The Relief Society and its male equivalent are to co-operate in their respective responsibilities to build a society of mutual respect, love, unity and understanding in which the King of Kings may take up His residence.

The “provoking” to good works should be mutually edifying and beneficial. Only the female and male priesthoods working independently as well as conjointly have the power to create Zion. Historically speaking, the women’s sphere of primary influence is that of other women—particularly during pregnancy, labour and childbirth as well. The education of young women in the virtues has also always been the purview of women as well as the protection and education of children and other vulnerable members of society. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the current governing body of the church has recently moved all of the organizations presided over by women to conference together rather than separately. The Relief Society and her two auxiliaries shall have their own meeting. Originally, the office of the Relief Society President was adjacent to the office of the prophet but was moved upon the completion of the new church office building. All that is needed are a few furniture movers to restore the Relief Society Presidentess to her original and rightful place next to that of the Prophet. On the other hand, the Relief Society President may prefer to remain in her own quarters with her counsellors and quorum close at hand.

Together with the restoration to parallel but equal standing in the priesthood, we might hope to one day see returned the Temple priesthood powers to offer healing blessings and other blessings in behalf of family members and all those who fall within the purview of the Relief Society Priesthood, which would be a great boon to those sisters, for whom the responsibility for raising their families in the Gospel rests squarely and unrelentingly on their shoulders. Perhaps someday we might see the stewardship returned to the Relief Society Presidency for the disbursement of funds for its own organization and that of her auxiliaries. With luck, so too will The Relief Society and auxiliaries once again have the oversight for the writing and distribution of RS, YW and Primary manuals. And maybe the future will see the mandate given to Emma “to make a selection of sacred hymns” for the edification of the global church and the “delight” of the Lord restored to the purview of the Relief Society.

Only men and women working collaboratively, calling down the powers of Heaven with the priesthood power and authority with which they have been endowed in the Temple can face down the deluge of evil that is now upon us. Such is my belief. That being said the minutes record that “Whatsoever the majority of the house [Relief Society] decide upon becomes a law unto the Society.” In other words, no changes should be made to the Relief Society organization without the assent of the majority of the sisters in the Church.

Will Gay Marriage Ever Be Settled? Lessons from Duck Dynasty

April 10, 2018January 7, 2014 by Nathaniel

The American Left has been instrumental in past decades at advancing the cause of equality, but their track record has been mixed. On the one hand, no one questions the morality of the Civil Rights campaign to end segregation and Jim Crow. In the 21st century racial debates tend to be about the nature of equality, but everyone in the mainstream of American life takes for granted that racial equality and integration is a good thing. The very unanimity with which interracial marriage is now accepted (just as one example) demonstrates, to my mind, the rightness of the cause. I would not say that popularity is a perfect metric of morality by any means, but I do think that acceptance of progress over a long time period is relevant to assessing the validity of that progress.

On the other hand, 40+ years after Roe v. Wade the American Left continues to try and frame the issue of abortion in terms of women’s equality and Americans–women included–continue refuse to buy it.

The contrast is, to me, stark and informative. On some social issues there is initial resistance followed by unanimous consent. On others, however, there is no sign of progress whatsoever. In fact, many indications are that the pro-life side is slowly gaining ground. Since the policy opinion is not shifting substantially, this reflects a growing awareness on the part of American citizens of just how radical and extreme our laws are. Americans are moderate on abortion, Roe v. Wade isn’t.

So the big question is: which category does gay marriage fall into?

The American Left naturally relates gay marriage to issues like interracial marriage and assumes we’ll see a chart like the one above: in 40 years time the idea of opposing same sex marriage will seem as backwards and forgotten as the idea of opposing interracial marriage. That explains the initial reaction to Phil Robertson’s comments about homosexuality: he was roundly denounced as a bigot and A&E immediately booted him from his own show (Duck Dynasty, which is the #1 non-scripted cable show of all time). Writing for the Daily Beast, Keli Goff correctly detected that this was an example of dangerous overreach:

Though nearly half of the country opposes same-sex marriage, the media narrative has become dominated by the storyline that only a small segment of backward bigots who hate gay people oppose same-sex marriage. That simply isn’t true.

Goff also points out that Robertson’s actual comments had been mischaracterized:

Despite the fact that in the next quote Robertson also quotes scripture to denounce those who commit adultery, drink too much, and slander others as sinners, he was roundly denounced as a bigot and hate monger, particularly in progressive and liberal leaning news outlets.

Just to add to that, Robertson did not equate homosexuality with bestiality. He listed homosexuality as a form of sexual deviance along with bestiality and adultery. As a confessed adulterer (before he was born again), Robertson was not calling gays sinners in any sense that didn’t include his own life as well. It’s a rare bigot who operates by painting himself and his targets with the same brush.

Goff even calls out media bias in the language used to cover the controversy:

Reinforcing bias in reporting on this story is the fact that many outlets caved to pressure to use the term “marriage equality” in coverage, when such a term is an activist creation. Interracial marriage is called interracial marriage, not “marriage equality.” If supporters of same-sex marriage view the civil rights fights as comparable, the same language standard should be applied.

It’s obvious that the reaction to Roberton’s comments was overreach, because within days A&E had to repudiate their own position and allow him back on the show. They weren’t the only ones to misjudge public opinion on this one, either. Outlets like restaurant chain Cracker Barrel yanked Duck Dynasty merchandise, and then faced angry customer backlash. They also caved.

Now, maybe the only thing that happened is that A&E, Cracker Barrel, and others misjudged the timing of America’s acceptance of gay marriage. Maybe we’re on that upward slope of acceptance (like for interracial marriage) and in 5 or 10 years comments like Robertson’s wouldn’t generate any widespread support. But I doubt it. I doubt it because what seems to be happening is a growing awareness among many, and not just social conservatives, that there is a real and important difference between bigoted homophobia and opposition to gay marriage. Goff writes:

Among my family members who oppose same-sex marriage, I have been told to congratulate my gay friends whose weddings I have attended. But I have simultaneously been told that such unions don’t fit my relatives’ biblical definition of marriage. I have further been told that in the context of the oft repeated phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin,” they see gay people no differently than they would view a straight person like me who decides to live with someone “in sin” (as the biblical saying goes). It wouldn’t make me a bad person but one who according to biblical text would be “living in sin.” In other words, they wouldn’t throw holy water on me but also wouldn’t throw me a parade. Most of all, they wouldn’t really care how I live my romantic life at all, as long as I was happy.

There’s a big gulf between the relatives I describe and someone who “hates” gay people.

Brandon Ambrosino made pretty much the same point for The Atlantic. Ambrosino, who is gay, criticizes the argument that “if you are against marriage equality you are anti-gay.” He writes:

If it’s “anti-gay” to question the arguments of marriage-equality advocates, and if the word “homophobic” is exhausted on me or on polite dissenters, then what should we call someone who beats up gay people, or prefers not to hire them? Disagreement is not the same thing as discrimination. Our language ought to reflect that distinction.

Ambrosino then concludes: “I would argue that an essential feature of the term “homophobia” must include personal animus or malice toward the gay community.” But, as I’ve already said, Robertson seemed to be placing sexual transgressions like homosexuality in the same category as adultery, of which he is guilty and about which he speaks publicly. I do not share Robertson’s born-again take on Christianity, but I understand it enough to grasp his meaning when he talks about sin and sinners and, most importantly, so does his audience. Millions of Americans were unafraid to stand for Robertson (albeit sometimes with rather strange conceptions of the First Amendment) not because they joined with him in anti-gay bigotry, but because they clearly understood that what he had said wasn’t bigoted.

So here’s the actual graph, so far, of the American public’s opinion on gay marriage.

Now, you can’t compare the shape of this graph to the abortion and interracial marriage graphs because the time frames are different. The interracial marriage chart goes back to 1958, the abortion chart goes back to 1975, and the gay marriage chart goes back to 1996. There’s no evidence, just based on the charts, to predict whether the gay marriage issue is going to be locked in a stalemate for decades (like abortion) or whether it will eventually resolve into near unanimity (like interracial marriage).

And, to be perfectly honest, I don’t have a high degree of confidence that I can predict the future on this issue either. Frankly, I suspect that the gay marriage chart will end up looking more like the interracial marriage chart than the abortion chart in decades to come. But it might not.

Goff and Ambrosino, both of whom support gay marriage, have already tacitly accepted that the gay marriage issue is not tied to broader acceptance of homosexuals as equal human beings in the same way that the interracial marriage issue is inextricable from racial inequality. You can’t logically support racial equality without supporting interracial marriage. But you can support equal rights for gays without supporting gay marriage. Race is not the same kind of identity as sexuality. This makes sense, since race is a nebulous biological category at best, but gender is much more clear cut.

The best thing that the gay marriage debate has done is force social conservatives to practice what they preach. In the 1990s and before, much if not most of the opposition to gay rights was really based on bigotry. It was based on “ick.” Conservative defenders of traditional marriage, as they style themselves, were much too slow to distance themselves from hateful rhetoric and genuine bigots. This blunder–both morally and strategically–cost them big. It may have been the deciding factor in the entire issue. Americans do not like haters.

But recently the traditional marriage movement has been sincerely careful in their articulation of a position that is anti gay marriage without being anti gay (to use Amrosino’s distinction). This distinction is obviously accepted by the broad swathe of American social conservatives, and I believe it explains the upwelling of support for Robertson better than the theory that half of Americans are just bigoted, hateful jerks. More importantly, even proponents of gay marriage like Goff and Ambrosino accept this possibility as well. All of this means that support for gay marriage may continue to climb until it reaches near-universal acceptance, or it may stall out well before that level (probably about where it is now) and become an entrenched, ongoing controversy like the abortion debate.

It’s too early to tell.

The Difficult Run 2013 Year in Review

January 4, 2014 by Nathaniel

Another year, another annual report on Difficult Run from WordPress. I made this year’s report public, so if you’re curious you can check it out yourself. Here are some highlights from the report and other thoughts about the blog at the dawn of a new year.

Traffic

2013 was the first full year of Difficult Run’s existence, and we had about 57,000 visits over the course of the year. Traffic has been going up month-over-month pretty much since the blog started, with a couple of exceptions.

June 2013 was a big month because of the post I did on health insurance vs. food insurance. It got picked up on Reddit and generated over 5,000 views in one day. We had another uptick in August when I launched a site design and brought the Difficult Run Editors on board. And then December 2013 was a low month because there were very, very few posts for the second half of the month.

The reason I put this info out there is mostly just that I’m always interested to get insight into what traffic other blogs are generated. So I thought it’d be nice to be transparent about traffic here. I don’t have any ads or generate revenue from this site in any way, so in a sense it doesn’t matter that much, but obviously if I and the rest of the DREditors publish our thoughts on a blog, we’d like to think that folks are coming along to read them. I’d always love to see more traffic, of course, but I’m pretty happy with the growth so far. My basis philosophy is to concentrate on making good content and then as a secondary consideration work to make it easy to find and then just wait. I’ll let you know in 2015 how that has worked out for us.

Site Changes

My friend Chris Walsh did a redesign of the site for August, and he gave me everything I asked for and it was fantastic. Trouble is, over time I decided that what I’d asked for wasn’t what I wanted. In particular, the full-width layout for reading individual posts felt wrong (even though it’s what I’d asked for). Rather than ask for another redesign, I realized that I was probably going to end up wanting to tweak the site no matter what it looked like, so I picked a theme I liked and started making my own modifications.

The current look, which I launched yesterday, is based on the Minimum Pro theme from StudioPress. I’m still tweaking all kinds of details and it’s definitely not as finished as I wanted it to be, but with the holidays, a new house, and now sick kids it was the best I could do. I wanted a new site for the new year, and I’ve got it.

I’ll continue to tinker with the site over the coming weeks but, for now at least, I think the basic look works really well. I particularly like how fast the site loads now that I’ve gotten rid of most of the images.

Coming in 2014

Based on what I’ve learned from 2013, I’m going to try fewer original pieces per week (probably just 1 or 2 at the most) but with more emphasis on the polish and research for those pieces. I’ve seen that it’s not impossible to get a post to go fairly viral on Reddit if I just have the confidence to invest a lot of work in a single post. More and more I think that the Internet does respond, over time, to quality. (That’s not the only thing it responds to, of course!) I’ll encourage the other DREditors to do the same, but I’m going to keep posting short snippets as well (just links to other articles with brief commentary) because A) it’s a compulsion for me and B) it’s the sort of thing I like to see in the blogs I read. I may move some of that off to Twitter, however, instead of posting all of them to Difficult Run. (Trying to squeeze my commentary into 140 characters is also good practice for me.)

I’m also going to expand into some guest posts. I have one very important post in the works right now from a guest blogger that I’m looking forward to posting, and a couple more in the works. Difficult Run is my personal blog, but I can think of nothing better to do with my tiny patch of Internet that invite my smartest friends to come and share their thoughts.

So, those are my musings on the year that was and the year that will be. What about y’all? I’d love to get some feedback on what folks would like to see more of in 2014. (Or less of. That’s not as exciting, but it’s just as useful.)

Book Review: Darwin

December 11, 2016January 1, 2014 by Walker

Paul Johnson, Darwin: Portrait of a Genius (New York: Viking, 2012).

Popular historian Paul Johnson’s slim biography/analysis of Charles Darwin and his theory is a surprisingly satisfying read in light of its relatively short length (clocking in under 200 pages). While likely of passing interest to scholars and those already well-acquainted with Darwin’s life, Johnson’s brief, but informative overview will be of value to the general reader. Johnson does a fine job of accurately describing what Darwin actually wrote and distinguishing it from those things that are often placed in his mouth. While he engages in a bit of pop psychology to support some of his sweeping statements, Johnson is nonetheless fresh and thoughtful in his writing. Most important, Johnson is able to paint a vivid picture of the broader context from which Darwin’s ideas emerged. This is consistent with one of Johnson’s major themes: ideas matter and often take on a life of their own. Thus, Darwin’s Malthusian interpretation of the evidence viewed evolutionary life as a vicious, violent struggle for existence. This outlook in turn aided other ideologies and movements that sought to use Darwinism to bolster their own worldviews, including eugenics, Nazism, and Communism. It is this latter portion on which some negative reviewers have focused their attention, despite the fact that it consists of only one chapter (Ch. 7 “Evils of Social Darwinism”). Mark Stern at Slate writes that Johnson’s “discussion of the world’s reaction to The Origin of Species” is “admittedly engaging.” Furthermore, he sees “Johnson’s overview of Darwin’s theory of evolution” as “clear, rich, and accurate.” Yet, the majority of his review is dedicated to explaining that there is “intellectual harm, historical harm, and moral harm” in linking Darwin to any of the 20th-century atrocities. The review’s subtitle describes the book as “the latest effort to smear evolution by natural selection.” Of course, Stern explains that such a book obviously comes from “a conservative, family-values-promoting British intellectual” who “has spoken out against divorce, liberation theology, unions, atheism, the Enlightenment, and even the Beatles.” Another (albeit shorter) review in the New Scientist bluntly states that Johnson’s book is nothing more than “a vendetta, an agenda-driven hatchet-job.” There is some truth to these criticisms. Johnson does emphasize that Darwin was a “poor anthropologist” who “did not bring to his observation of humans the same care, objectivity, acute notation, and calmness he always showed when studying birds and sea creatures, insects, plants, and animals” (pg. 29). For example, Johnson points to Darwin’s opinions of the Fuegan “savages” during his voyage on the Beagle as evidence of his lacking in anthropology. While an important factor, I’m reminded of another scholar’s take on the matter:

When incautious scholars or blinkered fundamentalists accuse Darwin or [German Darwinist Ernst] Haeckel of racism, they simply reveal to an astonished world that these thinkers lived in the nineteenth century.

Race and the LDS Priesthood Ban: A Brief Personal History

May 7, 2016December 10, 2013 by Walker

"You must unlearn what you have learned." - Spencer W. Kimball: Jedi Master — “You must unlearn what you have learned.” – Spencer W. Kimball: Jedi Master

When I was in the LDS Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Utah preparing for my two year, I struggled with answering specific questions about Church history and past practices. One question in particular revolved around blacks and the priesthood ban. For most of the LDS Church’s life, black Africans were not allowed to hold priesthood or participate in temple endowments/marriage. The ban was lifted by President Spencer W. Kimball in 1978. One of my MTC teachers attempted to skirt around the issue until I point blank asked him what answer he would give as to the reason for the ban. He simply said, “I don’t know why.”

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On Magic

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Shallow

Reckless

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Priesthood and Ministry

Ministering vs. administering

Priesthood Power and Priesthood Authority

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