Belief and Assumptions, part 4

A friend just posted a link to an article on a similar topic to my Belief and Assumptions series, only much better-researched. It takes my line of thought a few steps further, explaining how peoples' "deeply-held views" (i.e. assumptions, in my terminology) affect how we view facts. The results were pretty scary. You should read the article, but in a nutshell, peoples' preexisting beliefs change how they view and believe the same (factual) evidence, and the manner in which it is presented can also affect their reactions; people accept evidence that confirms their beliefs, and look for ways to disprove evidence that contradicts them. This is distressing. How can we argue objectively if we're able to twist the facts to fit our preconceptions? Now I understand how two people can leave a debate each being more convinced of their own position than when they came in.

Given their lethal effect on objectivity and consensus, I'm starting to think assumptions should be avoided whenever possible. I say "whenever possible" because, as I already argued, quite a few basic assumptions are needed to function in life. Hold on loosely to your convictions, no matter how right they seem to you. The only exception I make is for my belief that God created all things, that He sent His Son to die so we won't be separated from Him by sin, that He is coming back to cement His reign over all things, and that His love is better than life. Happy Easter!

On Alcohol

I've been 21 for a little over nine months now. Apparently in America it's a tradition to go out drinking for your 21st birthday--can't wait any longer, right? Well, I was on summer project for my 21st birthday, where we weren't allowed to drink, so I just had some blazin' wings instead. After getting back I tried some beer and wine at home--disgusting! They pretty much tasted like something you'd clean a drain with. I swore off alcohol and couldn't imagine why anyone would drink the stuff. Since then, my friends (particularly my good friend Evan, who has become something of a beer connoisseur since turning 21) have been working on me to "see the light". All kinds of rhetoric about it being an "acquired taste".

Finally, after the Good Friday service at Hope Community Church we decided to go to Pizza Luce. Being in the company of good and trusted friends, I decided to give it another chance and let them pick an alcoholic beverage they thought I'd enjoy (the same challenge I'd extended to my dad before). Nathan settled on some English Strongbow cider and I went to town. Unlike the other stuff I'd tried, the noxious taste of the alcohol didn't drown out everything else and I could taste the apples, which was nice for a change. I ended up finishing mine before anyone else, mostly because I drank it like I would drink any other beverage. Apparently that's a mistake.

The results were...interesting. Basically I got chronically dizzy. I also found everything a bit funnier, but it's hard to tell if that wasn't just the fun night with good friends I was having. It wasn't really enjoyable and I still don't get the whole hype about getting "buzzed". What's so fun about being dizzy? Either way, I definitely wouldn't have trusted myself to operate a motor vehicle that night. So, you shouldn't drink and drive. I was still able to figure out the tip easily, so maybe drinking and deriving is okay after all.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Vegetarianism

I've been a proud omnivore for nearly my entire life. Well, there was a period after we visited Cabela's, but I got over that partly because it was getting too hard to feed me. And 1 Corinthians 10:26-26 makes God's position on vegetarianism clear. (Just kidding) But while browsing a random Facebook thread (I can't even remember what it was), I stumbled across the most convincing argument for avoiding meat I've heard. Let me paraphase.

If you've taken a biology class (or especially a biogeography class), you may know what a trophic level is. It's basically an organism's level in the food chain, with primary producers (plants) at the lowest level and apex predators at the highest. Most of the animals we eat (i.e. cows, pigs, etc.) eat plants and are therefore second-level primary consumers. Obviously the energy in living matter originates in the sun; plants take in the sun's energy by photosynthesis to grow, and are then eaten by animals and their energy passed on. So far so good, right?

Well, if you scroll down to the section titled biomass transfer efficiency, you'll see an explanation of the problem I saw pointed out. The transfer of energy from one trophic level to the next is inefficient; most of the energy organisms take in goes towards basic metabolism, with only 10% actually stored by growing. This means that the energy we get by eating (for example) a steak is one tenth the energy from plants that went into producing that steak (by being eaten by the cow).

The timing of this thought was more or less perfect, as today I drove out to celebrate Easter prematurely with my family. To get there, we drove for about three hours, mostly through endless fields of feed corn. Feed corn that, of course, goes to feed cattle that we will likely eat later. Imagine how many more people we could feed if instead of growing feed corn in that space, we grew something humans could actually eat? The world's arable land is limited, and if feeding people is our ultimate objective, it's more efficient to do it directly.

This is a purely pragmatic, not a moral, argument for avoiding meat (which is different than how it was originally presented). It doesn't indicate that we should give up meat altogether, merely that we should question how we use our arable land. There are probably lots of holes in the argument as I presented it, but the basics of it were new to me and quite interesting. Please post comments or corrections.

Rules of Double Monopoly

• Play with two complete Monopoly sets. Two boards, two sets of properties, two sets of cards, etc. Place the boards next to each other.
• When a player would advance to the 'GO' space on the board their piece is currently on, they move to the other board's 'GO' space instead. Similarly, if a player would move to a space that is behind them on their current board, they move to that space on the other board. i.e. if a player is on Free Parking and gets a card saying to advance to St. Charles Place, they advance to the St. Charles Place on the other board instead. (They pass GO on the new board and collect $200 as usual)
• Keep property and Chance/Community Chest cards separated by the board they came from.
• If a player gets a card saying to pay money, they place the money in the middle of the board they are currently on (to be collected by the player who lands on the Free Parking space of that board).
• A player is said to have a 'monopoly' on a color if they have at least half the properties of that color. i.e. any three of the six orange properties between the two boards or any two of the four dark blue properties count as a monopoly.
• If a player had developed a monopoly on a color and gets another property of that color, they cannot build up any of the already-developed properties of that color until the new one 'catches up'.
• If a player has two undeveloped non-railroad, non-utility properties of the same name that aren't part of a monopoly, the rent on them is doubled.
• What to do if a player has at least three utilities or five railroads is up to you.

No Greater Love: A Good Friday Meditation

For those who don't follow the Christian calendar, today is Good Friday--the day we celebrate the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross. I think Good Friday can get swept under the rug of unconsciousness, what with Easter coming up in two days. But this is undeserved. Yes, Easter is about Jesus' supreme triumph over death, which is awesome and gives us hope for a future with no weakness, no sickness, no decay, and no suffering. But something equally essential took place on the first Good Friday. The huge gap between man and God that we'd carved out with our sins, which previously was impassable, was bridged. Our iniquities that had separated us from God (Isaiah 59:2) were canceled, paid in full. God's righteous fury against our sins, which should have resulted in our destruction, was taken out on His own perfect Son instead. Anyone could come before God now, justified and clean. As if to demonstrate this, the Bible says that the curtain in the temple of Jerusalem, which separated the Most Holy Place where God was believed to dwell from the rest of the temple, was torn in half when Jesus died. The message was no doubt clear to the Jews: God no longer resided in one particular place, and He no longer had to be sought and petitioned by trained priests and holy rituals. Now anyone could come before God.

But there is more significance to Christ's death on the cross. It is held up by John as the supreme example of what love is: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." (1 John 3:16) Later he writes, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His song as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." (4:10) Christ on the cross is the perfect example of God's perfect, relentless, costly love. Compare it with  the kind words of a Hallmark greeting card, or the depravity and selfishness passed off as "love" in the media. God didn't just say He loved us, He showed it off by giving up His own Son to give us the greatest gift in history. Just as He didn't spare His Son, He calls us to love Him with our whole selves, holding nothing back. This is the God who created all things, the God that Christians serve, and the God who wants everyone in the world to know and be known by Him.

Seems like a pretty good deal to me.

New Name

Behold, the blag known as Fractal's Great Big Internet Book of Thoughts is no more! As I've been getting more and more serious about my blog as an output buffer for my brain, I've found that the old name's lack of seriousness increasingly clashed with my intentions. (Thank goodness I didn't go with my original idea: 'Thoughts, Ruminations, Ponderings, and Maunderings") No, I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation of the meanings of the new name (I count at least three), but some should be fairly obvious. Thank you to everyone who has read, commented, or otherwise thought about my blog! I'll try and get something more substantive up later...eventually...when I have time.

Grace

Today was the second-to-last showing of the student-run Xperimental Theatre's much-anticipated show, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: The Musical! Incredibly exciting show; I hope you got the chance to see it. We anticipated massive demand for it, and so we managed to fit 84 seats in the theatre and 8 shows in the run, but even this proved not to be enough. I've been house managing tonight and we had literally dozens of people show up without reservations, hoping to see the show. It was with a heavy heart that we informed most of them that they wouldn't be able to get in. Apparently we didn't emphasize the fact that reservations were required enough.

But then, about 20 minutes before the show's start, the director talked it over with the cast and crew and decided to put on a second show! We got to tell everyone we'd turned away (who hadn't already left) that they would be able to come in! I'm sitting outside the second show now; apparently we filled the house about halfway again.

Anyway, this whole mess struck me as an example of grace. No one, especially not the house managers, thought these people would get to see the show. They should have gone home disappointed. Only a last-minute intervention by the director (who is amazing, by the way) reversed their plight. The way I described it, the parallels with our situation with God are clear. The corruption in all of our hearts and its fulfillment in the evil we all do separate us from God in His perfection. The fate we justly deserve is condemnation, but Jesus' intervention--in the form of His sacrificially paying the penalty for us--lets us have communion with God anyway.

If you realize the depth of the problem this switchup solves--our unimaginable 'screwed'-ness--then the gospel will be the best news you've ever heard. I was ecstatic to be able to tell people they'd be able to see the show after all, let alone how happy they must have been! Grace really is amazing--unnatural, unjust, and essential.