Danny:
We're having a baby in two days. I simply lack the time to respond coherently. I lack the time to do anything else coherently as well. Take this as best you can and we'll hit it up again in a week or two (or six)

The effect of injury causation in isolation on the triage decisions of Emergency Department nurses.  Are you sure?

Sure. Sounds interesting. I have lots of friends who are nurses here in Ohio. This one guy is a nurse at a women's correctional facility (prison). The other day, while he was at work, he watched a t.v. special about this woman who went crazy and killed her husband, three kids and the neighbor's dog before leading police on a high speed chase through the city.
He watched the show in prison with the woman who did all those things. She complained that the show got it all wrong. "It was much worse that that," she said.

i am tweaking little details between different standardised triage questionnaires to investigate whether nurses assign a lower priority to self-inflicted injuries, or to injuries sustained from domestic violence, than to accidental ("worthy") injuries.

Do domestic violence cases tend to get a lower priority than, say, someone who accidentally broke his leg? I accidentally poured acid in my eye a few years ago. My roommate had this strange chemical he used to clean his contacts and I reached for that instead of my usual bottle of contact solution (accidentally. I didn't have my contacts in so I really can't  be blamed). It hurt like hell. I was seen almost immediately at the hospital and they used one of those ph-strips to see how bad things were. My eyeball had a ph of 4! Everyone had to come laugh at the guy who poured acid into his eyes. I was the center of attention. It was magical.
It's okay, though. I'm blind in that eye now (for unrelated reasons).

i feel much the same about the civil war/slavery debate.

I'm glad we feel the same way about stuff. Like you said … we're still just figuring stuff out.

How would that explanation reflect on the idea that God the Father is one and the same as God the Son?  If the two are of the same substance, is it possible for one to know something that the other does not?

How, indeed? The mechanics of the trinity aren't exactly spelled out in scripture (at least … they aren't as far as I know. I'm sure someone like SJ will step in and correct me here if I am wrong). There's a lot of discussion about it but, by and large, a lot of what I see amounts to a collective shrug of the shoulders.

What we do know is that Jesus, assuming he was not misquoted, says several times that the father is greater than him, that there are some things the Father knows that he does not. So, in answer to your question, it is quite possible for one to know something the other does not. That seems to be how it is.

i suspect that it is a huge deal to many people, who tie their conception of Jesus' divinity to his sharing in the characteristics of God and in the inerrancy of the Bible.

I don't think Jesus not knowing the day and/or time of the end of the world means he doesn't share in the characteristics of God. I also don't think Jesus being possibly wrong means the Bible is inerrant. I think it means some people got bad ideas stuck in their head and turned them into gospel (maybe). I also think it means there's a lot going on in the story here we don't quite see. There are a lot of different angles we could take.

Originally, I said, "there are a lot of different angels they could take." Spelling matters, apparently.

Me: Maybe he was omniscient as God and not-quite-so as a man. Or maybe God doesn't have perfect knowledge of every little future detail. I don't have a problem with that. Do you?

You: i have no particular problem with that.  i don't personally believe it, but i will credit it with being internally consistent.  Bravo!

Huzzah!

It's an interesting quote, not one that i'd encountered before.  CS Lewis is much beloved of American Evangelicals - i know that Tony is a big fan, because when he came to visit me he insisted on taking a tour of Lewis' favourite watering holes in Oxford which resulted in me at least getting moderately tipsy in the middle of the afternoon - but i suspect that this image of a fallible Christ is not one that they would embrace.

It depends on how you define "fallible." I think it's reasonable to expect that Jesus was morally perfect, but does that perfection necessarily extend to all areas of life? For instance, are we to also assume Jesus was a master of Kung Fu? If not, does that mean he was not God? But, if so, can we create wall posters of Kung Fu Jesus? Because I'd totally put that on the wall in my office.

I get what you're saying about C.S. Lewis. I think you have the people like SJ and I who have read all (or most) of his works, digested his opinions, researched them and come to our own conclusions about what he has to say about things. And then you have the people who remember reading a Narnia book or two then bought "mere Christianity" and left it on their bookshelves, pointing to it when friends come over so everyone would think they are smarter/more educated than they actually are.

I kept Jane Austen novels on my bookshelves for years for similar reasons. I wanted to impress the ladies with my "sensitivity." The irony of this is that Jen LOVES Jane Austen and I think any library that doesn't have Jane Austen novels is a good one, even if they carry no other books.

You're right in saying most evangelicals would not like the idea of a Christ who occasionally got things wrong (not morally, but factually). It's common in Christian circles to say that Christ was fully God and fully man. People are alright with his godly characteristics, but his humanity tends to make them uncomfortable. I think most evangelicals would be offended by a lot of other things Christ did and said, too.

i think that this analysis (CS Lewis, i mean) skips over some other possible explanations for the "Why hast thou forsaken me" from Mark 15:34.  Mark was the favourite gospel of the Docetic heretics of the first and second centuries, who believed that the divine spirit was a separate entity from the man Jesus, that it entered him at baptism and that it left him at the moment of his death, hence that cry.  Mark certainly does have Docetic elements, which may even have been toned down by later scribes, so it may be that the gospel writer was setting down exactly the message he wished to convey.

Maybe. I'd have to read more about the Docetics and Gnostics to know what I think about them. But its always possible to find new angles (not angels) on stuff. What do you think when you read Mark?

To say that the laws of nature can never be suspended would be an article of faith, but you notice that the sort of people who seem to believe that they used to be suspended on a regular basis if the Bible is to be believed tend not to build any expectancy of them being suspended into their daily lives, especially when in an aeroplane at 30,000ft.

You also don't see a lot of examples in the Bible of God asking people to jump off cliffs just for the heck of it (Divine Bungee Jumping. A new, extreme sport brought to you by the inventors of "Cat-A-Pault" and "The Human Sledgehamer"). There is often a point to testing people's faith. It's usually part of a greater story.

From the point of view of the naturalist, that is the only firm evidence, but i can understand why it might be frustrating to someone else.

How do you propose evaluating something that, due to its very nature, defies the sort of evidence and testing you would consider firm?  Please note … I've never been frustrated with you on this topic.

i guess it's a bit like if someone told you that Earth was orbitted by a twin planet, home of many extraordinary creatures and people.  What if that same person told you that your request to be shown it through a telescope was unreasonable, and that you would just have to visit it in your head?

I'm imagining this world is full of oompa loompas. Just so you know. I like oompa loompas. I was nearly arrested once, in college, for chasing a group of midgets dressed as ooompa loompas at a halloween party in Athens, Ohio. My friends gave me a t-shirt to commemorate the event.

Yes, there was alcohol involved. </rambling>

I would ask them how they experience this phantom extra world and try my best to replicate the experience. If it worked, I'd do my best to see if I was 1) going crazy or 2) actually experiencing something real. If I'm not going crazy, maybe I was wrong about Oompa Loompa Land.

I hope oompa loompa land exists.

ME: Let's do an experiment…

You: i will give this some thought, and try to get beyond my instinctive dislike for the idea.  No offence, it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion, but i've spent a long time thinking of prayer as little more than self-involved meditation, so it's not a project that i easily embrace.  However, i promise to think about it.

Just wanted to see how the thinking was going. At the very least, its a decent approach to investigating the existence of oompa loompa land.

…

There's more stuff to say. I'll get to it later. Wish us luck!

Much love,
Joe

Danny:
We're having a baby in two days. I simply lack the time to respond coherently. I lack the time to do anything else coherently as well. Take this as best you can and we'll hit it up again in a week or two (or six)

Congratulations!

 

sweetness.

Joe,

Long time, but i'd say we both have pretty good excuses (yours is the best - fatherhood definitely trumps dissertation research).  i'm glad to hear that Micaiah is recovering well from the trauma of being born!

Sorry to hear about the contrasting sadness in your social circle at the moment.  Life, as Bertrand Russell once said, is stranger than really weird sh*t sometimes.  Actually, i have a feeling that might have been Eddie Izzard.  It may be a hollow comfort, but i am personally grateful to not have yet become immune to human tragedy, although sometimes it would be easier to keep smiling if i had.  But even if it does nothing else, our own sadness for the misfortune of others is an imperceptible validation of their importance and worth, whether as valued friends or just members of the same human community.  i also think it serves a lot of other useful functions, including giving us as individuals some context on our own lives and relative good fortune, but i like the idea of a kind of psychic ripple effect spreading out from an event that tells the people at the centre that, "hey, you matter".  Maybe not in any way that that they can discern, but it's not nothing.

Namibia was a lot of fun.  We stayed a week on the coast, in an almost deserted off-season tourist town (Swakopmund), and then headed up north to stay with Mercy's mother for the second week.  If i could make myself black, there are times when i totally would (not forever, just for that moment).  In a country with a relatively recent (only 20yrs ago) history of enforced segregation by racist government, and where economic privelige is still very much concentrated in the hands of a white elite, my skin colour is a complete nusiance at times.  i can't walk down a street in most of Namibia, particularly if i am with Mercy, without attracting all kinds of attention, most of it just curious, some of it actively hostile.  In the capital she is frequently presumed to be a prostitute, which needless to say annoys both of us, but elsewhere we simply feel like circus freaks.  i imagine it's rather the same feeling that i might get in many parts of the world if i walked down the street holding hands with another man. 

Anyway, we didn't let that spoil our fun.  We went kayaking with seals, rode camels, and did a bit of sailing.  Implicitly reinforcing the stereotypes that get us so many stares, i suppose, but what can you do.  We had dinner in a couple of nice restaurants where Mercy was the only black person in the building, with the unified exception of the waiters.  A certain amount of resentment is to be expected from any population that has to put up with a regular supply of priveliged and ethnically-distinct tourists.

i had no idea that Windhoek had such a good runway.  i will look on it with a more discerning eye next time i land there.

Re: your last e.mail

How do you propose evaluating something that, due to its very nature, defies the sort of evidence and testing you would consider firm?

It's an undeniable problem (for everyone).

Ah, gotta go.  Mercy has just walked in from work and given me a look which i would translate as "i love what you've almost done with the place".  i need to get up and be helpful.

Later,
Dan